


From the Wrong Road, Miles from No Place

by JennaCupcakes



Category: The Terror (TV 2018)
Genre: (this is funny because they're in space), Alternate Universe - Science Fiction, Blow Jobs, Horror, Long-Distance Relationship, M/M, Marriage Proposal, Minor Character Death, Near Death Experiences, Phone Sex, Setting: The Expanse, Sex Dreams, Space Illness, Space Opera, copious use of Belter creole, it's about the gradual building of mutual respect and adoration
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-17
Updated: 2020-07-18
Packaged: 2021-03-03 05:13:08
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 37,676
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24219439
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JennaCupcakes/pseuds/JennaCupcakes
Summary: In the twenty-fourth century, humanity has colonised the solar system. Mars and Earth, the two dominant superpowers, have reached a delicate balance, at the cost of their extractive colonies in the Belt. With new worlds opening up for colonization beyond a wormhole gate at the edge of Sol, both Earth and Mars are scrambling to stake claims on the new worlds.Two former warships,ErebusandTerror, have been outfitted to undertake exploration of RG1256, an Earth-like planet beyond one of the gates. But there is still much that humanity doesn't know about the technology it so carelessly makes use of, as the crew of those ships will soon discover.Complete, updates every Sunday.
Relationships: Captain Francis Crozier/Commander James Fitzjames
Comments: 156
Kudos: 103





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Finally, it is finished – another Teror Space AU, this one set in the world of The Expanse. Will update every Sunday, as long as I remember what a ‘Sunday’ is when it happens. 
> 
> I’ve tried to keep the story open to both people who’ve seen the show/read the books and people who don’t know what the hell is going on. They’re in space. That’s all you need to know for now. 
> 
> This is James S.A. Corey’s sandbox, I just play here. I apologise in advance for anything I may have misremembered about the canon of their world. For those who’ve read the books – yes, there is some handwaving regarding the timeline. 
> 
> Regarding the Belter Creole, I will provide translations at the end of the relevant chapters, unless the character from whose point of view we’re experiencing the chapter doesn’t understand what is being said, either. If you’re in your browser , you should be able to also hover for translations. I also apologise for anything I have gotten wrong with regards to the creole – in the end, I decided to have fun with it instead of agonising over the grammar. 
> 
> The title is taken from Erza Furman’s song _No Place_.
> 
> I dedicate this story to [matt-j-freeman](https://matt-j-freeman.tumblr.com/) on tumblr, for reminding me of my Expanse-obsession and sharing my excitement for the story! I hope you like it :)

“ _The_ Francis Crozier?”

James Fitzjames looked up from the muster list Admiral Franklin had handed him. The man across the table from him nodded silently, his mouth pressed into a thin line that James always wanted to interpret as disapproval. It did little to combat James’s disbelief.

“Francis Crozier,” James repeated, as though saying the name would make it ring truer. They had gathered at the UN Navy headquarters in New York, just the two of them, to go over the first details of _the mission_. No one spoke of anything but _the mission_ yet, but the urgency and speed with which the details were being hammered out spoke to the gold rush mentality of it. Exploration of the space beyond the ring gates was a competitive business. Any lead on useful resources beyond one of the gates had to be guarded carefully, lest a Belter colony ship, or worse, the Martian Congressional Republic Navy, snatched the prize away from under their UN noses.

Francis Crozier. James shook his head. The Belter who had joined the UN Navy. The Belter who had been named a traitor to his own people by the likes of Anderson Dawes. An outcast in the Navy that was his only family. _The_ Francis Crozier.

“You know, some would consider it a great advantage to have a – to have someone with his expertise on our staff.”

James had read about him. The man was a living legend. Even among those in the Navy who despised Belters as lazy, criminal pirates, he had the reputation of someone who was capable, if not well-liked. James had been fascinated by his story. Admiral Franklin, across the table, made a dismissive noise.

“You’ve flown with him before, haven’t you?” James asked. He leaned back in his seat, trying to give his question an air of nonchalance. It wouldn’t do to appear like an overexcited teenager before his commanding officer. The polished surface of the table between them displayed the pockmarked expanse of space beyond the ring: a starless void that connected 1,373 wormholes to 1,373 different solar systems. A waystation, built by an entity older and more powerful than Earth and the humans that inhabited her. Their destination. James had heard the sight of it had driven people mad – a mixture of claustrophobia, they said, and the inability to comprehend what they saw. A space where space _ended_. James would face no such deficiencies, he was sure.

“I have met him,” Admiral Franklin corrected, “When I was stationed on Ganymede.”

James wanted to ask about Ganymede – shining jewel of the Belt, and the site of its greatest disappointments – but he knew just enough of the story of Franklin’s stewardship of that moon of Jupiter to refrain. Franklin’s term had not ended well. Ganymede was firmly in the Belt’s hands now, and all the worse for it.

“That was just before Captain Ross undertook the first exploratory mission,” Franklin said, “Did you know they found a planet so rich in lithium that it paid for the cost of the expedition thrice over?” Something like reverence hung in his voice, something dreamy. “Retired at forty-three.”

“We’ll soon have a chance to make our own names,” James said. Privately, he thought that at fifty-nine, Franklin’s jealousy of Ross was understandable, but he would not embarrass the man by calling attention to it. James hoped to spend some more time in the service, but he was well aware that if they got half as lucky as Ross, there would be no need for that. For the kind of money a UN mining patent could fetch, the admiralty would give anyone brave enough to go out there and stake a claim anything they asked for.

It wasn’t without danger. The ring gates swallowed whole ships when they felt like it, and the worlds beyond the wormhole gates were hostile in the way of nature that did not care for human ambition. Like most anybody, James had watched the drama on Ilus, site of the first exploration of a world far from Earth, unfold with bated breath. But the ghost town of the ring gates had remained empty of all ghosts after that, and more and more people were setting out. James would be damned if he was left behind.

“Would you take a look at the provisions here?”

Admiral Franklin passed him a piece of paper and James was pulled from his contemplation of the two-dimensional map.

“Of course.”

He filed it away in his binder. Under the pile of papers, the map flickered and shifted. Ships – projections almost a day old – moved about the map cautiously, taking care not to tread too close to the walls that bounded the starless space. James wondered if any of them had their eyes on his prize. He couldn’t wait to be out there.

* * *

Transit to the ring took them nine months.

During the first three months, visits from one ship to another were frequent. The low gravity no longer made James queasy as it had when he was just eighteen and leaving the gravity well for the first time. Before their first dinner aboard _Erebus_ , James had a chance to observe Francis Crozier disembark the light shuttle sent to bring him and his command crew over, and was struck by the Belter grace that twenty years of service in the UN Navy had not been able to wipe from the man’s muscle memory.

He looked squatter than most Belters James had met, standing just a hair’s breadth shorter than James, but that impression might have been led mostly by his stocky build. People in the Belt didn’t grow sideways, they grew tall and nothing but, and yet here was Francis Crozier, looking more Earther than Belter except for the way that he moved in the low gravity.

James felt like a right oaf next to him. His gravity boots made his steps clunky and heavy where Crozier didn’t even activate his. He adjusted for the smallest changes in the gravity like someone accustomed to living in places where gravity was not a constant.

Other than that, he talked like most people James had met – well, not like most people in the Navy. Crozier was not prone to boasting, and he spoke very little, but what he said revealed almost none of the exotic Belter creole that James knew from his visits to the shadier parts of Luna. No _sasa ke_ from Crozier, not so much as a _sabaka_ or _pashang_ when he was upset. Not that James saw him upset a lot. He bore most meetings stoically, but without joy.

James found he was disappointed. The most Belter thing to Crozier’s speech was that he rounded out his vowels and mispronounce his consonants a little, but that was the extent of it as far as James could tell.

And he didn’t talk to James.

He responded when questioned, sure, but his answers were monosyllabic and to the point. He refused every single one of James’s invitations to socialise outside of the mandatory wardroom dinners, and he always came in the company of Edward Little or the civilian navigator, a tall, intimidating Martian named Thomas Blanky. James had never met a Martian in person before. Thomas Blanky seemed like a fine example of one.

Instead of finding out more about Belter culture, James found himself spending most of his time under thrust going over the observation specs with Henry Le Vesconte, who had served with him during the war with Mars. There wasn’t a lot they could puzzle out about the world behind the gate that had been chosen for them. The UN probe had discovered traces iridium in high enough quantity that it opened up the military budget for an exploratory mission once more. Anything beyond that – the climate of the world, the gravity, the number of moons – was beyond their data. Still, they tried.

John Franklin held weekly sermons, which James attended. Franklin claimed he had always been religious, but James had heard whispers that Franklin had been so unsettled by what had happened to the UNN _Agatha King_ that he had taken to his long-forgotten Christian upbringing with a renewed fervour. His zeal was as much to reassure himself as to quash any sympathy for the strange cult that had crept up around the protomolecule, the strange not-quite-organic-not-quite-mechanic substance that had built the ring gate out beyond Neptune. James thought that a sensible course of action.

After four and a half months, with gravity now a little over one-g, their two ships prepared to flip and initiate the braking burn towards the ring at the outer edge of their solar system. James was on the bridge for the manoeuvre, though it wasn’t strictly expected of him, as the navigators undertook most of the work themselves. He could hear Thomas Blanky’s crackling voice over the tightbeam between the two ships.

“Preparing to flip.”

“Understood, Master Blanky.”

In his crash couch, blanketed by soft gel, Master Reid was typing away at his own terminal. He was on a slow drip of acceleration juice – blood-thinners to prevent strokes under the heavy shifts of gravity – same as the rest of them. The crew was confined to the crash couches for the flip, even though it was a standard manoeuvre – the sudden cuts and shifts in gravity could be dangerous to the most experienced Belter.

“ _Erebus_ ready to flip.”

“ _Terror_ ready to flip.”

James had taken the gunner’s seat out of habit, he realised. Sometimes, when Franklin wasn’t on the bridge, he still forgot he was second in command to this mission. Henry would tease him endlessly for it if he saw. _“Maybe they’ll let you shoot at rocks, Fitz, now that you can’t shoot at Martians anymore.”_

“Initiating flip.”

The gravity dropped away suddenly, and James was on the float – even belted into his crash couch as he was, the sudden sensation of falling always caught him off guard. He had tied his hair back in anticipation of the loss of gravity, but a loose strand tickled his face, nevertheless. He brushed it away, and then the gravity slammed back, the full one-g of it, and James was back on Earth again, weightlessness forgotten.

“ _Erebus_ successfully flipped,” Master Reid confirmed.

“ _Terror_ successfully flipped,” Master Blanky echoed across the tightbeam, “Initiating braking burn.” James wondered briefly about Crozier on _Terror_ , if he had come up to the bridge to see the manoeuvre. Crozier hadn’t been over to _Erebus_ since gravity had surpassed three-quarters of a g. Crozier had spent most of his life on Earth and was perfectly capable of withstanding Earth gravity, but James imagined it probably wasn’t very pleasant for him. He’d pay him a visit in a week or two, James vowed, when gravity was lower again.

* * *

“ _Oye, beratna_.”

Francis snorted as he heard the familiar Martian drawl mangle the _Lang Belta_ as Thomas Blanky stepped up to Francis near the viewing window. He was wearing the dark blue UN Navy jumpsuit, and like Francis, he looked like a fish out of water in it. With the dark brown skin and black hair of a Mariner Valley Martian – and the terrible accent of one – Thomas Blanky was too clearly not of Earther descent. He and Francis had that in common.

“Why don’t you _sétop, sabakawala_?”

Thomas took the invitation to shut up – and the less than kind moniker Francis had given him – with a small shrug of one shoulder. “You know, this is the reason no one likes you, Frank.”

Beyond the window, Francis considered the stars he had known all his life. Strange to think he would soon be far away from them, when all his life he had worked to reclaim his rights as a citizen of Earth.

_They took our homeland from us._

_This_ is _your homeland,_ welwala _. Get used to it._

Francis had never gotten used to it.

“Is there a reason you came to bother me in my hour of contemplation?” Francis inquired, aiming for irked and missing by a little less than a mile. He could forgive Thomas a lot, including a late-night intrusion on Francis’s misery.

“Your hour of contemplation usually transitions seamlessly into your hour of inebriation. Might a lowly navigator beg off a bulb from your considerable stores?”

Francis liked Thomas Blanky better than most people he had met in the UN Navy, because both of them had no reason to be here except the fact that they were. A Martian ex-military navigator, Thomas Blanky had found himself on the wrong side of a blockade during the height of the conflict between Earth and Mars a couple of years ago. Caught up in a skirmish, his civilian ship – Blanky had been fifteen years retried from the Martian Navy then – had taken damage and Blanky lost his leg. He owed his life to the UNN Captain who did not distinguish by flag when answering a distress call, even at the height of a war and after what had happened to the MCRN _Donnager_. The Captain had kept him on as a navigator, and gave him a position during the war, which saved Thomas’s life in the short term and made a return to Mars a near impossible thing in the long term.

They were both outcasts from their communities.

“Come on then, _pomang_ ,” Francis said gruffly, “Before I change my mind.”

Francis wasn’t partial to the moss whiskey they made on Ceres, but it was the most a Captain of his standing could afford to stock up on in bulk. Good enough for a Belter like him, Francis thought bitterly. Blanky made a face when he tasted the drink – most Inners did.

“Christ, Frank. No wonder you’re always so miserable.” He shook himself. “It’s like you never even heard of Ganymede scotch.”

“If you don’t like it, you’re welcome to leave,” Francis said dryly. Thomas took another sip of his whiskey, “On second thought, it’s quite good.”

They both sipped their whiskey, contemplating the unfortunate turns of fate that had brought them to the most godforsaken place in the galaxy without even good whiskey to accompany them.

“You’re right, you know,” Francis said, “It’s a shame to call this whiskey.” He shook his head. “Everything we made, we modelled after Earth. My ancestors reinvented civilization in a vacuum, and yet everything we made, we made in Her image. Whiskey. Ships. Stations. Gardens. Our laws. Our history. And then we wondered why we were unhappy.”

He raised the transparent bulb, considered the golden liquid in it that was so far from the drink that had inspired it. “We should have given it a new name. We should have reinvented ourselves, instead of trying to be _lik da tumang_.”

“You’re in a bloody mood tonight,” Thomas said, “Full Belter independence, _ke_?”

The fact that Thomas spoke _Lang Belta_ – if haltingly – was another fact that endeared him to Francis. Growing up, Francis had hated the pidgin sound of it, the way the gangs on Ceres would sink deeper and deeper into their creole until they sounded barely human to Francis. It was only when he came to Earth that he realised he spoke it too – the Belt not only lay in his bones, but on his tongue, as well, setting him apart from the other graduates at the academy.

Now, years removed from his childhood in the Belt, his mother tongue was as much a comfort as it was a welcome way to gossip.

“I’m sorry.” Francis rubbed at his eyes and took another sip of the whiskey. One time, visiting then governor Franklin on Ganymede, he’d gotten to taste real whiskey – not Ganymede whiskey but actual Scotch from Islay. It had a honey-smooth texture that surprised Francis. He’d almost forgotten the taste of it. “It’s Fitzjames and his _felota_ math.”

“What about his math?”

Thomas was in a good mood, to humour Francis like this. When thrust gravity had exceeded one G, he’d taken to wearing his long hair open. It made him look older, like some kind of half-mad sage from a cave on Earth. Now that they were on the braking burn, with gravity dropping away under their feet, he tied it back again.

“The last time I saw math that bad – let’s just say you don’t survive that in the Belt.”

“Not everyone’s a rock-hopper,” Thomas said.

“I’m not asking him to plot a slingshot course around the moons of Jupiter. But if you’re in the Navy, you should understand orbital math better than a _pashang_ toddler.” Thomas snorted. Francis took another sip of his whiskey. “It’ll stop being funny once we come out the other side of the gate. That’s uncharted territory.”

“Master Reid will see _Erebus_ through it,” Thomas said, “And don’t forget, you were young, once, too.”

“How old is he, even?”

“Thirty? Thirty-two?” Thomas guessed.

“ _Imim ta pashang_ ,” Francis muttered, and Thomas laughed at the expletive. “Didn’t you use to think that Inners couldn’t walk until they were five because of the gravity?”

“I was–” Francis began, then realised the irony in what he had been about to say. _I was young_. At least Francis’s stupidity had hurt no one but himself. Fitzjames was in a position where a little stupidity and bad leadership could get people killed.

“What does he even want here?” Francis asked instead. “He’s never been on a deep-space mission before. He was stationed on Luna, and that’s as far out as he got. And now he wants to go to _da nating_?”

_Da nating_ , the space beyond the gate. It took a lot to scare a Belter, and yet they spoke of it in the same hushed tones as Earthers and Martians.

“You’re here as well,” Thomas pointed out with unfailing logic, “And all you’ve ever wanted was to go to Earth.”

Francis gave him a dark look. “He wants me to take him to Medina when we pass through.”

“Ah.” Thomas’s expression softened. He nodded. “So that’s the source of all your Belter ire.”

Fitzjames had cornered Francis after the last command meeting. Francis didn’t like how familiar he was with everyone, how tactile. He’d clasped Edward Little on the arm, even thanked Jopson with a warm handshake, taking Jopson’s small, pale hand between his long-fingered ones. And then he’d put a hand on Francis’s shoulder. Like they were _friends_.

“I think I should like to see a last bit of civilization before we leave for foreign shores. Would you do me the honour, Francis? As a local?”

Francis could have forgiven him everything except that last addition.

“Treats us like we’re a goddamn tourist attraction,” Francis muttered, staring at his knees. Thomas cocked his head to the side, trying to catch Francis’s eyes. “Have you considered that he may be genuinely interested in seeing Medina?”

Francis scoffed. “What’s there to see on Medina?”

“Now who’s being unappreciative of the Belt?” Thomas scolded. “ _What’s there to see on Medina_.”

It wasn’t like Francis hadn’t heard it all during his twenty years of service. From his gruelling first year to the humiliating decades that followed, Francis had heard every misconception about the Belt flung his way. He had persisted in spite of the Belt, not because of it. There were pockets of shining ingenuity out here in the black, but Francis had not come from one of them. He wasn’t a child of Tycho or Ganymede. He had been born on the highest of the high levels of Ceres, deep in the rock, where the Coriolis was so strong that Inners who came to Ceres never even found their way there. Pure Belter territory.

“I saw the Grand Canyon once,” Francis said, “Now that’s something to see. Not a metal box in a place where humans shouldn’t be.”

“We all want what we lack, _welwala_.”

_Welwala_. Thomas spoke the word without malice – when Thomas said it, Francis could acknowledge the truth of it. _Welwala_. Planet-lover. The insult had been hurled at Francis since he had signed his life to the UN Navy, no – since before that. Ever since he first started talking about his right to a piece of the Earth that had given birth to his ancestors. It had a second meaning, one far more insidious, and Francis knew that meaning well, too. _Traitor_.

Thomas sighed. His whiskey was almost empty. “You took bone supplements and exercised to the point of exhaustion for two years so you could even begin to set foot on Earth. Leave the man his curiosity.”

Francis raised his hands, palm-up – the Belter version of a shrug. He had no love for the Belt – but twenty years in the UN Navy had taught him to hate Earthers, the small-minded people who greedily hoarded the planet that should rightly belong to them all, even as they destroyed it. It would take a lot for Francis to take Fitzjames at his word.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Translations**  
>  Oye, beratna - Hello, brother.  
> sétop - shut up  
> sabakawala - asshole  
> pomang - Duster (Martian)  
> lik da tumang - like the Earthers  
> felota - (mild expletive, akin to damn, but literally 'a floating object' aka the thing that kills you So Fast in space)  
> pashang - fucking, fuck, etc.  
> Imim ta pashang - We're fucked  
> da nating - the nothing
> 
> **Belter Creole Resources**
> 
> [A Belter creole google doc](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/18EYF96hf9d3huND26ztVmf12w713HD2gl9oCIfXBkyo/edit#gid=1339947780)
> 
> [Belter creole phrasebook](https://www.memrise.com/course/1476694/lang-belta-belter-creole-phrasebook/)


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> James misreads a situation. Francis wishes he still had a Spacebook account.

Medina was beyond description.

The moment _Erebus_ released nav control to the harbour master of Medina – a woman with a Belter accent so thick James found he had trouble following the rapid exchange between her and Reid – James had allowed himself to feel the awe at the monstrosity Tycho’s engineers had created. At two kilometres long and half a kilometre wide, the enormous barrel-drum filled the entire viewscreen of _Erebus’s_ bridge. Over the years, Medina had lost all resemblance with the generation ship it had once been: Decades of Belter ingenuity meant additions that would have created problems for a vessel under thrust. Even so, she was a miracle, the very best that Tycho Manufacturing and Engineering Concern had ever built. The shudder that went through _Erebus_ when she docked rocked James in his seat, and he felt giddy like a child.

They would restock at Medina before the last leg of their journey. Even though the longest part of their transit lay behind them and the ships were amply provisioned, no sane captain would pass up the opportunity to fill up their stores before heading into the unknown. Besides, a little shore leave would do the crew good.

James himself met Captain Francis Crozier of _Terror_ on the docks of Medina. He’d half expected to see the man in one of the hodgepodge Belter jumpsuits, but he was wearing his Navy uniform, same as James, and James shook his head at the silly thought. With the docks not under gravity, James had to float through the airlock to meet Crozier, then activate his mag boots on the walkway. Crozier smiled weakly when James’s boots clicked to the floor.

James tried not to stare as they passed through the docks, but it was hard – the only thing that compared in the slightest were the docks on Luna, and those were Earther docks: run by hard people, yes, but nothing that compared to the mix of people and languages of the Belt. There were workers proudly displaying tattoos declaring their allegiance to the OPA – erstwhile terrorist scourge, and the next best thing to a government in the Belt. The name – _Outer Planets Alliance_ – carried a strange irony now that the ring gates had opened up worlds beyond even the farthest of Belt settlements. A new frontier. And the old one was already getting left behind.

Most of the workers on shift were Belters, but many of them were Martians as well. The opening up of habitable worlds had hit Mars – decades, if not centuries away from the completion of its terraforming project – harder than any other place in the solar system. James spotted a couple of Earthers as well, but out here, they were the minority.

He watched as two tall, slender Belters in mechs unload a freighter in zero-g, affixed to the dock only by razor-thin tethers and the thruster packs they wore on their backs. They handled cargo that must have weighed tons like it was nothing, and James only noticed he was staring when Crozier _accidentally_ elbowed him in the back. James tore his eyes away.

Crozier steered them towards an airlock that read _DRUM_ in English, German, and Hindi, the script peeling with age already. The original languages of Belt colonization could still be seen in most stations – James knew the creole was spoken, but less frequently written. Crozier gave James a small smile, and James wondered why he looked so cheerful all of a sudden. “After you.”

James thanked him with a nod and passed through the door into a small chamber. Francis followed, then closed the door and hit a button. The airlock cycled, something mechanical slotted into place with a deep _thunk_ , and them James felt his stomach lurch.

Medina owed her special status not just to the luck of being in the right place at the right time when the ring gates had opened. Her fame was owed to the fact that she was the only ship – the _only_ ship – that could have transformed the disaster of the ring gates’ first opening into something that was survivable for the people involved, and it was all thanks to the miracle of engineering that Tycho had pulled off. Where most ships created their own gravity under thrust and were without it on the float, Medina’s central section – crew quarters, shops, markets, offices, wastewater treatment, temples, gyms, anything a man might want or need – was built as a rotating drum. She was the only spaceship that created her own spin gravity.

The problem with spin gravity was that it was very hard to get used to for someone who had only ever known thrust gravity or real gravity. James felt the wave of nausea as poignantly as on a rollercoaster ride, the way his inner ear was telling him he was about to be flung off the ground itself. Blindly, he threw an arm out and found nothing, no railing, no way to steady himself – and then Crozier gripped his hand.

“Easy,” he muttered, “Can’t have the pride of the UN Navy vomit his guts out in front of all these Belters, can we?”

James’s world stopped spinning. He nodded carefully – he still felt dizzy. Without a point of contact to anchor him, he would simply careen over sideways, he was certain of that. Did Belters from spin stations like Ceres get sea legs when they left the asteroid? James had never thought about that.

“Don’t worry. It’ll only take your inner ear a couple of days to adjust.”

“Days?” James wheezed, and suddenly understood why Crozier had looked so damn smug. “I supposed you find this all very funny.”

Anger helped him pull himself up more than a kind word could have. He righted himself and fixed his eyes on the gentle drum-curve of the horizon. There were plants, and stalls of food – even a little park area. It all looked pleasant and welcoming; nothing like the grime and dirt James had been told to expect from the Belt. The entire scene was lit by a gentle white light, so like sunlight that James had to look up to assure himself there wasn’t actually a sun in the sky.

His second mistake.

Vertigo hit him almost instantly as he looked up and – past the glowing white light in the middle of the drum – saw, far on the other side of the drum, people hanging from the ceiling, but walking, going about their daily business same as –

_“Nakangepensa pashangwala_ _.”_

Crozier caught James before he could fall over, but it was a near thing. He dragged James out of the thoroughfare into a side-passage where he gently lowered him against a wall. James’s world was still spinning.

“Never heard–” Speaking was hard, mostly because he was fighting the urge not to vomit. Crozier kneeled in front of him, steading him with one hand on his shoulder. “Never heard what?”

“Creole,” James croaked, “Never heard you speak it.”

“It’s not done for a Captain in the UN Navy, is it?” Crozier hissed. He kept turning his head, checking left and right, as though he was actually worried someone might see them. “Just… sit still for a moment, alright?” He said with a long-suffering expression. James, magnanimous as he was, granted him his wish. He closed his eyes and let his head fall back against the wall. Slowly, the feeling of the ground under him and the structure at his back began to anchor him. Crozier had let go of his hand, which was a relief – that embarrassment would have been one too many for the day. Eventually, the nausea began to fade.

“Is that why you agreed to bring me here?” James asked. “Because you knew it would be funny?”

“Don’t be absurd,” Crozier said. He actually sounded insulted. When James made to rise, Crozier held out his hand and helped James get back to his feet. A little of the edge had gone out of him – he didn’t stand with his back quite so straight anymore, and he actually _looked_ at James for more than a second at a time. James dusted off his jumpsuit.

“Alright. Should we find some food?”

Crozier led him out into the thoroughfare again. Although by his own admission he had only been to Medina once, with James Ross, he moved with the confidence of one who had the lay of the land. James supposed it was much like being in a new city back in England – the streets might be unfamiliar, but not the general tone of things. James walked slowly, taking in his surroundings with the unabashed curiosity of a foreigner, but Crozier kept his gaze fixed firmly ahead as they walked. James noticed that people were staring at them, and suddenly realised how out of his element he must look – he was tall, but not Belter-tall, and his Navy blues betrayed his Earth allegiance straight away. Most of the people just looked curious, but James caught a couple of more hostile glances as well. He knew the type – bullies, ex-OPA fighters or rebels without a cause in the delicate peace of Sol. Hard men and women, spoiling for a fight, just waiting for an Earther to let out their aggressions. Well, James didn’t feel threatened by a look.

Crozier picked out a restaurant that looked like little more than a hole in the wall to James. The owner had set up little chairs in front of it, complete with colourful parasols that served no real purpose besides decoration. Upon closer inspection, James saw that everything had been welded to the floor in anticipation of a sudden loss of spin gravity. Belters left nothing to chance.

Crozier ordered for them, but he spoke crisp English even when the old woman behind the counter visibly struggled with his order. James had stepped away a couple of paces so that Crozier would feel more comfortable switching to creole, but something told James that his presence in Crozier’s mind alone was enough to deter him. James couldn’t pretend he understood Crozier’s situation, but he knew a thing or two about shame.

“ _Kewe na_ hurry up?” As James was contemplating the delicate socio-political implications of language, a tall belter in a grey jumpsuit ambled up behind Crozier. He looked like he’d just finished his shift, his coverall grease-stained and his hair plastered to his head with sweat. He easily loomed over Crozier’s stockier build and didn’t look the least bit intimidated by either Crozier’s uniform or his broad shoulders. Crozier ignored him. “Two soups, please.”

“ _Mi sasa, kopeng?_ ”

The man made a gesture James couldn’t interpret, but he didn’t look pleased at being ignored. The elaborate gestures that accompanied Belter conversations were even more alien to James than the creole. James’s hand at his side twitched, but he didn’t know if he would help things or make them worse by stepping in. He couldn’t even understand the man, besides the fact that his body language was telegraphing _aggression_ a mile away. A couple of the customers in line had already scattered.

“I understand you just fine,” Crozier said patiently, “Now if you’d let me order, I’d be out of your way all the quicker.”

Fuck it. James decided to come to Crozier’s aid. Perhaps the sight of two UNN officers would deter this man from seeking an easy fight after a frustrating shift. Something flashed in the man’s eyes when he saw James, and James didn’t think it was the fight leaving him.

“ _Tenye kopeng, to, mi sasa.”_ The man grinned. “Big, strong Earther, _ke_?”

He shoved at James’s shoulder. James had expected something like that; and braced his body so he didn’t stumble backwards.

“Why don’t you leave me and my friend alone?” James asked. He’d talked enough men down from drunken brawls on shore leave to know how to keep his voice calm. The grin on the man’s face never wavered, even as James raised his hands in a placating gesture. “We want no trouble.”

“ _Kowlting gut, bosmang_ ,” the man said, grinning at James now, then formed a circle with his thumb and forefinger, keeping the other fingers straight. James relaxed his shoulders. OK. Everything was alright. He turned back to Crozier; whose face was red, his mouth a thin line of barely suppressed anger. He took their orders from the woman without looking at James once, then, instead of sitting down at one of the tables, marched them away from the place.

“ _Ya_ , _to_ better run, _ke_?” The man yelled, derision dripping from his voice. James made the mistake of turning around just once, giving him an additional moment on the stage. The man made the gesture with his thumb and forefinger again, and James began to get the feeling it didn’t mean that everything was alright. “ _Welwala_.”

Francis whirled around instantly, dropping both bowls of soup. They made a sad little splotching sound as they hit the ground, but Crozier was already marching back towards the stall and the man. James reached for his arm and caught his sleeve, pulling insistently until he could get a grip of Crozier’s upper arm.

“Don’t, Francis.”

Crozier strained against James’s hold. He looked like a man possessed, and James could feel the muscles of his arms, ropey and well-defined. James twisted his wrist to get a better grip, even as Crozier snarled at him. “You don’t understand!”

James could read Crozier’s reaction well enough to understand it must have been bad. He knew he had missed something in the jumble of languages and gestures, the intricate way of conversation between Belters that James wasn’t a part of. More like than not the insult had been directed at James – after years of being the boot on the Belt’s back, the UNN had more than earned its reputation. In James, they saw an Earther they could blame.

“I understand enough,” James said calmly, still thinking about talking people down from drunken brawls, “Let’s go.”

After a moment’s hesitation, the next second hanging in the air as though suspended in zero-g, Crozier relented. James could feel the tension leaving his muscles even before he turned – shoulders locked tight, jaw clenched – and followed James.

The Belter shouted more expletives after them, and James felt the hot rush of shame for walking away from a fight. The part of him that thought he had to prove himself in every situation wanted to go and beat that man bloody. But that wasn’t what an Earther would do, at least not an Earther without anything to prove.

Once they were out of sight from the stall, James slowed them down. Crozier was still breathing heavily, but his face looked less red. James let go of his arm. He would admit that he hadn’t expected Crozier of all people to come to his defence.

“I appreciated that,” James said, nevertheless.

He certainly wouldn’t have expected it. Not when he knew how Belters prized loyalty. But the way Crozier had looked back there – _no_ , James thought firmly. That was not a thought he would follow right now.

Crozier looked at him, the scowl back on his face. “I – what?”

James frowned. “You deal with stereotypes all the time on Earth. I can take a little abuse from a dockworker.”

Crozier laughed, then – short and mirthless. “You think this was about you?”

“It wasn’t?”

James would be the first to admit to his surprise.

“You really don’t know the first thing about Belters, do you?” Crozier asked, then shook his head. He continued walking.

“Hey, now–” James hurried after Crozier. “What did he say, then? If it wasn’t a slur against Earthers.”

Crozier didn’t answer him immediately. He kept walking. James followed, insistently.

“ _Welwala_ ,” Crozier said finally, the word thick and heavy on his tongue, “is not something an Earther will ever be called. It’s reserved for a special class of Belters.” He looked at James, his grin more a perfunctory show of teeth. “He called me a traitor to my people. Because, to them, that’s what I am.”

“Oh.” James felt stupid. The man had cornered Crozier after all, not James. _Welwala_ , he repeated in his mind. “I’m sorry.”

Crozier scoffed. They were leaving the food court behind now and entering what looked to be a playground and park area. Around them, the sound of birds arose in the air – no doubt, James thought, played over the PA system of the station. He could see no birds anywhere around them.

“Is there anything I can do?” He asked. He felt ignorant, helpless – he had expected to draw disdain from Belters, he’d never believed he’d see it turned against one of their own. The curse of tribalism, James thought.

“Anything you could do would make it worse,” Francis muttered. He wasn’t even looking at James or the people around them, just kept his eyes fixed ahead. After twenty years of living on Earth, the confrontation still got to him. James wondered if the added distance made it easier, or worse.

“You could punch me,” James suggested, trying to draw at least a scoff from Crozier, “Maybe that would convince them you’re _beltalowda_.”

He’d heard the phrase thrown around the docks of Luna. As far as he understood, that was how Belters referred to themselves, though he’d never been able to master the grammatical intricacies of it beyond parsing that _belta_ probably referred to the Belt.

Crozier snorted and turned towards James. He seemed genuinely caught aback, the expression on his face unguarded. Then, as though remembering himself, he returned to his habitual scowl. “That’s not even grammatically correct.”

“Why not?” James asked, which earned him another disbelieving glance from Crozier. James shrugged, self-conscious. “Call it academic curiosity.”

“You’re counting yourself among the Belters when you say it like that,” Crozier explained, “And I think we can agree that’s definitely false.”

James flinched. Up ahead, there were more food stalls, and the smell nearly overwhelmed James. He found himself briefly transported back to his UNN training in Singapore’s, with its colourful markets that somehow had nothing on Medina.

“Where did you even pick that up?” Crozier asked. “Don’t you _inyalowda_ consider it a dirty language?”

James smiled easily. “Like I said, academic curiosity.” He straightened his shoulders and tossed his hair back. Already, he felt steadier on his feet.

“Is that why you wanted to hear me say something in creole so badly?”

James groaned at the reminder of his little fainting spell earlier. Crozier obviously delighted in reminding him of it. “I didn’t mean to offend you,” James said, his apology genuine.

“No offense taken,” Crozier said, “Though you might see why I am suspicious when a pretty Earther asks me to do a Belter accent.”

Then, realising what he had said, he clamped his mouth shut. James cleared his throat. “Err, well. Yes.” He took care not to look at Crozier, and he had a feeling Crozier was taking care not to look at him. “It wasn’t my intention to treat your heritage as a… mere curiosity.”

Crozier ducked his head. James suddenly realised Crozier must have accused him of doing that exactly.

“ _Ne xalte ere gova_ ,” Crozier said suddenly, as though forcing the words out before he could think better. The Belter creole sounded strange and yet right on his tongue, “It means _all is forgiven_. I won’t commit it to memory.”

James smiled, then. _Ne xalte ere gova_ , he repeated in his head. Ahead of them, the drum-curve of Medina’s horizon stretched upwards.

* * *

“I’m here to see the captain.”

They had left Medina after a couple of days dedicated to restocking and shore leave, which James had spent with a surprisingly willing Captain Crozier as his guide. They had sampled Medina’s varied cuisine most of the time, finding food a relatively safe topic of conversation for their fraught accord. For all of James’s fascination with the Belt, he already knew that a cuisine entirely based on yeast would never fully agree with him. Nine months in space had James dreaming of a good beef steak, a luxury even on Earth but at least a luxury that was in the realms of the possible. Crozier had made a face when James had told him about it. “I never understood the Earther fascination with meat. The replica stuff tastes just the same, and it doesn’t give you gas.” James had laughed at that, and for a moment Crozier had seemed pleased to make him laugh.

James already missed the light, and the sound of people around him – people who were just going about their daily business, not the rigorous, clockwork background noise of an ex-military vessel refitted for exploration. The _Truman_ -class battleships could carry over a thousand crew, and with the minimal deployment of their mission, it was quiet even at the height of a shift change. Although Medina had held little sympathy for their Earther crew, it had at least been human. Out here, that was different.

They were on the acceleration burn towards the ring gate.

“I’m sorry, Sir, but the captain is indisposed.”

When James had arrived with the L-type dropship that doubled as their light shuttle this morning, Chief Petty Officer Peglar had welcomed James aboard _Terror_ and informed him in the same breath that he could have saved himself the trip – the Captain was indisposed. James had ignored that, reasonably sure that any order Crozier might have given pertained to his crew, but not expedition command, and had gone in search of Crozier on the bridge, and then in Crozier’s quarters. The man was not to be found in either location. James had to resort to bribing Lieutenant George Hodgson with the promise of a bottle of gin next time Hodgson visited _Erebus_ , to finally learn that Crozier was in sickbay. Having made his way there, James found his next obstacle in the form of Thomas Jopson, Crozier’s steward, blocking his way.

“The Captain is indisposed.”

Jopson sounded quite firm, but James had his doubts. It was rare enough for any serious illness to make it past the medscanners. There was no such thing as _indisposed_ for a Captain.

“Is he ill?” James asked. He’d told Franklin he’d be back half an hour ago. “If he is, I think, as a fellow officer, I’m entitled to know. The mission could depend on it.”

Jopson squirmed. James knew for a fact that he liked James – most people did – but Jopson also held a loyalty towards Crozier that seemed to supersede any other considerations of sympathy. James wondered what had inspired such undying loyalty to Crozier in the man. “It’s nothing like that, Sir, he’s just… indisposed.”

Jopson nodded solemnly. He was undercut just seconds later by the loudest, angriest cry James had heard in his life – even through the closed doors, the sound was halfway to deafening. James recognised Crozier’s voice immediately. “What on God’s good Earth is going on?”

He couldn’t even ponder the irony of the statement before Crozier’s voice – now at a more normal volume, and decidedly more exhausted – rang out from inside sickbay. “Send him in, for fuck’s sake, Jopson.”

Jopson scowled at James, but he ducked aside. “Sir.”

The doors parted, revealing a sickbay that was empty save for one bed. Crozier lay strapped into the crash couch, his face sweaty and pale, while Assistant Surgeon Alexander MacDonald attended to him. Crozier’s heartrate on the monitor was elevated and irregular.

“Are you alright?” James asked carefully.

“Do I fucking look alright?” Crozier took one more moment to glare darkly at James, then let his head fall back in the crash couch and closed his eyes. James noticed a slight tremor in his hands. “How much longer, Doctor?”

“You have twenty minutes left in this treatment,” the surgeon said.

“Twenty – we’ve been here for _hours_ , Alexander!”

Dr. MacDonald shrugged. “You know the procedure better than me, Captain.”

Crozier grumbled, “I know, I know,” and James stepped closer yet. “What the hell is going on?” He repeated.

Crozier and MacDonald exchanged a glance. Crozier sighed. “Bone enhancers. Half a year in low-g affects me more than it does you.”

“Oh,” James said. He knew, of course, that the Belters’ physiology prevented most of them from ever setting foot on Earth without heavy modifications to their body. Many never could. Bone density wasn’t the only problem – oftentimes, their cardiovascular system simply couldn’t keep up with the stress of a full g. Somehow, James had assumed that twenty years in service of Earth would spare Crozier this treatment.

“Do you have to do this every time?” James asked, then wanted bite his tongue and take the words back. He’d known the man for a couple of months, had spoken personably to him a handful of times, and now he was asking him about his _medical history_. James didn’t want to be just another person who felt entitled to Crozier’s life story simply because he was a rarity. But Crozier simply nodded, perhaps too exhausted to care. “Any tour of duty long enough to cause regression in my bone density. Which is anything over a month or two. Less, as I get older.”

All James had to do was keep at his exercise when they were under less than a full g of thrust, to prevent muscle atrophy, while Crozier had to fight against the very structure of his body. It boggled his mind.

“I’m sorry for intruding on you, Captain Crozier,” James said, resorting to formality to save himself from further embarrassment, “I won’t keep you any longer.”

Crozier blinked open one eye, peering at James critically. “You came all the way over here. The least you can do is distract me while – _ah_ – while the good doctor tries to kill me.”

A sudden violent tremor passed through his body, and MacDonald reached for the med station attached to Crozier’s arm. The device beeped, and Crozier’s body stopped twitching. James realised he’d reached for Crozier’s other arm automatically, and quickly withdrew his hand.

Crozier hissed angrily. There were spots of red on his face, but his skin was pale as wax otherwise, the exhaustion plain. “I thought,” he said, then paused to take a deep breath, “I thought you would be too busy on _Erebus_ to need me for anything. Otherwise I would have informed you.”

A gamble. Crozier wouldn’t have informed them, if it meant being spared the shame of revealing his Belter deficiencies. James knew that. Crozier couldn’t really think he was fooling James.

“Of course,” James said, “I’m sorry to call on you without prior notice, but there is only so much of Admiral Franklin’s company a man can stand.”

Crozier snorted out a laugh that was immediately interrupted by another moan of pain. When he righted himself, there was still the ghost of a smile on his face. “I’m sure I’m much better company right now.”

He had a wild, determined air about him, James thought. James didn’t know any other man who would subject himself to this torture regularly, with death or retirement the only end in sight. And Crozier did it without complaining once. James couldn’t pretend to understand the first thing about him.

“Well, perhaps you’ll do me the honour of a visit once you’re feeling better, then,” James said, “ _Erebus_ has excellent coffee.”

* * *

“Can I get you anything else?”

Jopson’s voice shocked Francis out of his half-drunk, half-asleep stupor. He’d been watching the lights of his hand terminal blink in an out of focus, bereft of their meaning in his unfocussed state of mind. Perhaps he shouldn’t have been mixing the painkillers MacDonald had put him on with his Ceres whiskey.

Looking up hurt his eyes. He had quite forgotten that Jopson was there.

“No, that will be all.”

Francis’s bones ached. His teeth were the worst, but he had been clenching his jaw during the procedure, so at least that wasn’t a direct result of the bone juice. His head was thrumming with a pain that threatened to split his skull – and he still had two more treatments left before MacDonald would deem him surface-ready. He sighed – this was the price he paid for a seat at the table of the UN Navy. He knew that. It didn’t mean he couldn’t, on occasion, regret his decision.

_Terror_ was never fully silent, but on her current acceleration run, she had quieted down remarkably: The crew was holding their collective breath in anticipation of transit through the ring gate. Passing through the Sol gate and into the slow zone had been met with trepidation. Now, as they were nearing gate 1256 and the edges of the slow zone, Francis felt an undercurrent of dread among the crew. _A space where space ended_. Who had said that?

He’d half debated taking up Franklin’s example of holding services, but the closest Francis had ever come to a Christian house of worship was Medina itself – built as a generation ship by Mormons – and Francis knew he would do better to reassure the men in his way: by setting an example. Pity that he wasn’t at his personal best.

This line of thought brought him back to Fitzjames’s ill-timed visit to _Terror_. Francis didn’t have a lot of vanity to begin with, and yet –

“Jopson?” Francis caught his assistant, who had been on his way out. “Did Commander Fitzjames announce his visit today?”

Jopson shook his head. “Not that I’m aware.”

“Hm.” The longer Francis thought about it, the more convinced he was that he should have just stayed away from Fitzjames. It was easier to think the man arrogant, well-meaning but vain, nothing more than a collection of war stories and Earther entitlement, than to find himself laughing at Fitzjames’s jokes, or God forbid – enjoying his company. “Thank you, Jopson.”

This time, his assistant did leave. The door to Francis’s quarters closed with a quiet hydraulic hiss, and Francis was alone with his aching bones that weren’t made for discovery, and with his stubborn mind that was. He reached for his hand terminal, then thought better of it and put it back on the table. The synthetic glass clinked softly against the lightweight material of the table.

It wasn’t like he’d be betraying Fitzjames trust, he reasoned. He was his superior officer – not directly, but in spirit at the very least. Francis wouldn’t be spying on him. He just wanted to satisfy his curiosity.

He pulled up Fitzjames’s personnel file. Then he put the hand terminal down again, more resolutely. He should just talk to him, over the coffee Fitzjames had promised him. _Coffee_. Such an Earther habit.

There wouldn’t be anything interesting in the file anyway. Nothing he hadn’t heard over the wardroom table of _Erebus_ a hundred times.

Knowing that further dallying would not lead to any significant changes of heart, Francis opened his hand terminal again. Fitzjames’s file was surprisingly concise. The most notable entry was his deployment during the war, on the _Leonidas_ -class battleship UNN _Cornwallis_ of the Home Fleet. He must’ve spent the war shooting at Martian missile platforms. The _Leonidas_ -class were mostly seen as a joke in the fleet, outdated by the time they were put into service – Earth’s last attempt at great engineering before the title passed resolutely to Mars – but they did have their occasional uses, small as they were. Much smaller than _Terror_ or _Erebus_. Their size and extensive PDC defence grid meant they were practically immune to torpedoes.

What was that like, being boxed up in that cramped ship, barely outside the gravity well, looking for the thing that wanted to kill Earth? Francis couldn’t picture it. He’d spent his childhood on enough small Belter ships, but he’d sat the war out training recruits down the gravity well and not knowing whether to be upset or grateful that they’d passed him over for command. All while Fitzjames was out there, in his gunnery seat on the UNN _Cornwallis_ , an eye on the sky looking for Martian missiles aimed at Earth’s defence grid, or worse, Earth herself. Knowing that one slip-up could kill millions in the only place where it mattered to an Earther mind.

Francis tore his mind from the war. It was over now. No one in the UNN would question his loyalties anymore. And Fitzjames had evidently gotten out just fine.

There was very little besides Fitzjames’s deployments in his file. The only other fact Francis could discern was his lack of a degree, but that hardly set him apart from most of the crew – only the very rich could afford both a degree and a military career. It might have worked against Fitzjames among the higher rungs of UNN command, but among the crew, only Franklin had both – and Blanky, but Mars had different needs.

Francis closed the file, feeling – ashamed, maybe. Dissatisfied, for sure.

_You could punch me._

It had been a joke. Francis knew it had been a joke – but Fitzjames must’ve known there was at least a part of Francis that had wanted to – not in that moment, but once upon a time. Now, contemplating it, he found the thought less appealing.

_As a local._

Francis would have done it, then. Clean as only a Belter could deliver: Identify the impact vector and where momentum would send him, throw the punch and let momentum carry him to the next advantageous angle. Fights in zero-g were a lot like orbital battles – there was more math involved than actual punches thrown. The stuff that made a good slingshot pilot also made a good boxer when there was no gravity, only Newton’s third law of motion.

When Francis pictured it now – the splitting of Fitzjames’s lip and the blood pooling over the open wound until a movement broke the surface tension – it didn’t seem half as appealing to him. Only small-minded and cruel.

It was no use. Francis got up, with a little more force than necessary. Gravity had dropped again. He put the empty bulb of whiskey in the recycler, then – knowing Jopson would have insisted were he here – chased it with a bulb of water and settled down in his crash couch. He would not solve the mystery of Fitzjames with more whiskey, or another look at his personnel file. Beyond the Sol gate, he couldn’t even check his presence on the nets – not that Francis would sink so low. There was only one thing for him to do: He would go over to _Erebus_ , after their transit through the ring, and have coffee with James Fitzjames.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No hover translations this time because James doesn't know what the _pashang_ is going on, but you guys deserve to know:
> 
> _Nakangepensa pashangwala_ \- stupid fucker  
>  _Kewe na hurry up?_ \- Why don't you hurry up?  
>  _Mi sasa, kopeng?_ \- Do you understand me, buddy?  
>  _Tenye kopeng, to, mi sasa._ \- I see you have a friend.  
>  _Kowlting gut, bosmang._ \- Everything's fine, boss.  
>  _Ya, to better run, ke?_ Yes, you better run, right?
> 
> Forming a circle with thumb an forefinger while keeping the other three fingers straight is the Belter version of flipping the bird.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Beyond the ring gate, things begin to go wrong.

When James woke up, it was like a bad dream – he was shivering violently, it was almost pitch dark, and he was falling.

 _Crap_. He’d forgotten to belt himself into his crash couch again.

He reached out blindly, spinning his body until his arm connected with something hard – the edge of his crash couch – and he could haul himself back into it. He shouldn’t forget this. The thought made him laugh at the irony of it all. There weren’t going to be any surprise manoeuvres. There weren’t going to be any more manoeuvres, period. It didn’t matter whether or not James Fitzjames remembered to belt himself into his crash couch at night.

It had shut down their Epstein drives.

The miracle of modern engineering that had made expansion possible – the hyper-efficient drive named after the Martian inventor who had inadvertently martyred himself on the altar of his creation – was, at its core, nothing more than a fusion reactor with some magnetic coil attached to it. Humanity, for all its advancements, had not progressed past nuclear energy as its best guess on how to power something large, ships being no exception. Epstein had just made it more efficient.

The protomolecule, dependent as it was on radiation, had nevertheless shown a dislike of fusion, ever since some idiot had taught the network that what humans used to power their ships was, essentially, a barely contained bomb.

The ring certainly hadn’t liked their ships’ drives very much.

 _Erebus_ and _Terror_ were both operating on battery power for the time being, until their engineers John Gregory and James Thompson could figure out what the hell was wrong with the reactors. Both reactors had cut out the moment the ships passed through the ring gate and refused to turn back on ever since. Admiral Franklin had expressed hope the issue would soon be solved. Captain Crozier had called him _dangerously short-sighted_ for that hope.

James ordered the lights up. They flared to a sad seventy percent, which still made James feel like he needed contact lenses to see better. His blanket was floating a few feet away from him, and he reached for it and wrapped it around his shoulders now. He was still shivering. The ships had been on the float like this for a week, still dropping towards the planet below them. At this rate, they would reach RG1256 in a couple of months, with nothing more than the thrust they were under. Before long, they would have to use precious battery power to brake the ships.

Dimming the lights and reducing power to climate control had been two measures Franklin, Crozier, and James had been able to agree on. Their disagreements – or, more precisely, Franklin’s and Crozier’s disagreements – started when it came to the course they should chart.

“We need to flip and burn back towards the ring gates. Now.”

Crozier had been adamant. He looked even paler under the dimmed lights. Thomas Blanky next to him had kept his mouth shut, but the look in his eyes told James he agreed with Crozier. Seeing Crozier next to Franklin, or even next to Blanky – two prime example Inners – was jarring. It made James realise how out of place Crozier must have looked everywhere he in the UN Navy.

“We will be much safer down on the surface,” Franklin had responded, “Where we will carry out the mission the UN Navy and Secretary General Avasarala have tasked us with.”

Crozier hadn’t been back to _Erebus_ since.

When the worst of the tremors eased – James, tall as he was, had always been prone to being cold – James rose and picked out the last of his clean jumpsuits out of his closet. Water purification was another issue – water, as any Belter would testify, was infinitely valuable in space. Wars were started over water shortages. Water was the first resource Earth had stripped from the Belt, before they even began capturing asteroids to harvest precious metals.

It was a challenge, dressing himself in zero-g, but James had gotten better at it over the last week. When he was done, he tied back his hair and headed to the bridge.

Admiral Franklin was already present, standing tall and tethered to the deck by his mag boots. James – who had taken to hurling himself through the corridors like a Belter, which was a lot faster than walking – snapped the heels of his boots together, and gently floated down to meet the deck. Franklin didn’t approve of them ‘carrying on like Belters’, as he called it. James wondered if he would express the same opinion to Captain Crozier’s face and found himself afraid he might, without so much as a second thought.

“Sir,” James said. Franklin turned with a pleased smile at the sound of James’s voice. “Good morning, James!”

On the view screen – not a window, though it did an admirable job at pretending to be one – RG1256 was almost visible with the naked eye. It was Earth-like in its appearance and weather, as far as their sensors could confirm, with an equatorial belt tilted towards the sun and polar ice caps to match. Its land-water balance was slightly more equitable than that of Earth, but other than that, it could have been home. Save for the fact, of course, that it was entirely alien.

“How is _Erebus_?” James asked, a part of him still hoping that their drives might yet be fixed by some miracle of engineering, or just a plain old miracle.

“Holding up admirably,” Admiral Franklin said, which James took to mean that nothing had changed. “I’ve heard a report from Mr. Gregory this morning. They’re going to try a manual reset of the drive. We’ll inform the crew as soon as Mr. Gregory has everything ready.”

They had tried a number of manual resets. They had examined _Erebus’s_ drive exhaust ports from the outside of the ship. They had tried new fuel pellets. Each measure had proven to be an exercise in futility.

“We should alert _Terror_ as well,” James noted.

“Oh, I will.” Admiral Franklin turned to James, a bright smile on his face that seemed no less sincere than it had a week ago. “I’m planning to go over there myself before the end of the second shift. To boost morale.”

“Ah.” James didn’t know what to say to that. It seemed an unnecessary expense of the dropship’s battery power. Then again, Admiral Franklin had been commanding people for longer than James had been alive. He likely had a better reading of the crew than James did. “Should I come with you, Sir?”

“I don’t think that will be necessary.” He clasped James’s shoulder. “That will be all, James.”

James began his duties on the bridge, while Admiral Franklin went to speak to engineer Gregory and ready the shuttle. There wasn’t much to do for James. He manually reviewed all systems. Their life support was running smoothly and draining their batteries at a dreadfully steady rate. Their water recyclers were working at optimal capacity. Their air filters had been checked at the end of third shift last night. James even let the system count up their arsenal of torpedoes and PCDs, though there was precious little to shoot out there. Not even a little rock for target practise.

Their long-range sensors were slowly bringing in more data on RG1256. There was still interference from the atmosphere, too much to bring in detailed readings beyond the original sites that the UN probes had explored. James scanned the information, but most of it was gibberish to him. He forwarded the data to Dundy with an invitation to chat about it over dinner – lunch for his friend, since they were on different shifts.

When all that was done, and then done again, he clocked out with a sigh and headed for the gym. He told himself he was setting a good example for the crew by keeping at his exercise, but the truth was he was bored out of his mind on the bridge, and the boredom had a tendency to morph into creeping dread when he let it sit for too long. An hour of cycling usually fixed that.

There was a commotion at the gym.

Under thrust, the roundabout 400 metres length – height, under thrust – of _Erebus’s_ _Truman_ -class form resembled a tall office building that connected through lifts. On the float, the actual lifts could be parked away out of sight, so that the crew could instead use the shafts as walkways. James was just at the junction leading down into section two, which housed crew quarters and recreational facilities, when he heard the raised voices. Thinking it might be an argument – even the most well-prepared sailors could succumb to cabin fever – James launched himself downward the rest of the way, spun around ninety degrees forward at the junction, then headed down the corridor. He gripped a handrail to stop his trajectory when he reached the gym doors and swung around rather more forcefully than intended.

He’d get the hang of it eventually.

Inside the gym, Dr. Goodsir had his foot hooked into one of the retractable clamps that came out of the floor when the ship wasn’t under thrust. He was half bent over, half holding on to the spasming body of a crew member that James didn’t immediately recognise from his position. Charles De Voeux was holding himself in a hovering position floating slightly above the deck, his mouth half open in a tableau of shock, steading himself with one hand on the wall.

“What’s going on?” James demanded. De Voeux’s eyes snapped towards James, but Goodsir remained focussed on his patient. “Morfin collapsed on the machine, Sir, just five minutes ago. I called for a surgeon immediately,” Des Voeux answered.

Morfin? James had seen Morfin when passing through the mess just yesterday. He had been leading the crew in a rendition of _The Leaving of Liverpool,_ a shanty that had survived the city it was named after by about a hundred years. Rising sea levels. Morfin had seemed perfectly healthy when he insisted to James that a ship without shanties had no right to call itself a ship.

“Where’s the CMO?” James demanded, “Shouldn’t Dr. Stanley be attending to this?”

“He’s busy,” Goodsir hissed, quite uncharacteristic for the mild-mannered, easily excitable scientist James had traded stories with back on Luna, “You have me, Commander Fitzjames, now if you’d let me do my work.”

James, sufficiently chastised, nodded – a movement that sent him spinning again before he caught himself with one hand on the ceiling – then motioned for De Voeux to follow him. Goodsir didn’t seem to be needing him. “Tell me exactly what happened.”

De Voeux relayed the events as best he could, but there was nothing satisfactory to be gleaned from it – John Morfin, coming off his shift, had gotten to the gym about an hour ago, where he’d completed fifteen minutes of abduction exercises on the ARED, the Advanced Resistive Exercise Device, then switched to the stationary bike. De Voeux had arrived about twenty minutes after Morfin for his own exercise and had been alerted to the fact that something was wrong only by a strangled sound and something floating in the corner of his field of vision.

In hindsight, it was lucky Morfin hadn’t fainted on the ARED. He might have broken something as well.

“I called for medical assistance,” De Voeux explained, “And two minutes later, Dr. Goodsir was here.” He did his best to appear stoic, but James noticed the subtle shifts he tried to correct with a steading hand on one of the handrails. He took a breath as though steeling himself for a question. “Sir–”

His shoulders dropped, and the breath went out of him again. Whatever he’d been meaning to ask, he thought better of it. Goodsir emerged some minutes later, announcing that he’d stabilised Morfin and would take him to sick bay now. “If you’d walk with me, Commander.”

Bless Goodsir, he probably thought he was being subtle. James turned to De Voeux. “Dismissed.”

De Voeux nodded, lips pressed together. He looked pale. For a moment, James struggled for a reassuring word – but he couldn’t think of anything. He was, he found, in need of a reassuring word himself.

Goodsir led the way to the medbay, moving the unconscious John Morfin by gently pushing him along with them. His floating body looked frighteningly lifeless. James made sure they were out of earshot of Des Voeux before asking, “What did you want to speak to me about?”

Goodsir cast a surprised glance at him. James let him think what he would. “Doctor?”

“Ah, yes.” Goodsir paused to manoeuvre Morfin’s body into the elevator shaft with them. They reoriented themselves so they were moving up the shaft as they would through a corridor. Goodsir was steering the unconscious Morfin with gentle touches. “It’s the nature of the attack, Sir. I’ve seen it before.”

“You have?”

Goodsir nodded. “Just hours ago, Sir. Henry Collins, he–”

“Collins?” James asked, surprised. “But Franklin sent him on the EVA only three days ago.”

Collins’s spacewalk had been followed by a thorough medical examination. He’d been sent out to assure that there was no external damage to their thrusters, though damage to the thrusters could not have caused drive failure on the scale they were currently seeing. Still, Franklin had insisted. He hadn’t informed Crozier.

Goodsir nodded. “He came to me with a strange headache. I was afraid it might be the radiation, but he didn’t show any other signs of radiation poisoning and his suit came up with no leaks in shielding, so I gave him some painkillers, and before I could do anything else, his body started seizing.”

“Good Lord,” James said as they exited the elevator shaft in section four. Convincing his mind that the wall was now the ground always took James a minute or two. Goodsir grimaced. “There’s more. When he came back to, he was talking about… things, that he had seen. Glowing, creeping vines. Darkness that didn’t end. A network. It didn’t make much sense to me.”

 _Visions_. Well, being marooned lightyears away from one’s home system was enough to drive any man mad. Admiral Franklin must have had the right of it when he decided to go over to _Terror_ to boost morale. No doubt Crozier wasn’t doing his best impression of an optimistic Captain on the other ship, not after his speech during the command meeting. Optimism didn’t come easy to him; James had learned that much.

“A little melancholy is to be expected, given our current circumstances, no?” James asked. “Is it possible that these seizures and visions are a symptom of the severe mental stress we are all under?”

Goodsir kept his attention focussed on Morfin. Sickbay was just up ahead. “It’s… certainly possible, Sir.”

“Then the best we can do is keep busy. I’ll make sure to put the crew on a double exercise schedule.”

James thought of the own panic in his throat, the way it would find him when he didn’t have anything to do. No wonder the crew was feeling the stress.

“A very good idea, Sir,” Goodsir said, his lips a straight line, “I’ll be attending to my patient now.”

James returned to the gym. It was empty – De Voeux had not returned to finish his workout, and nobody else from first shift had come up in the meantime, either. James strapped himself to one of the bicycles, ordered the ship to play Prince, and set about losing himself in his exercise.

He made it twenty-three minutes into the workout.

“Commander Fitzjames to the bridge.”

It was Henry’s voice coming over the speakers, which meant that the Admiral must have taken the shuttle over to _Terror_ already. James grabbed a towel and dried off his face.

“ _Erebus_ , acknowledge,” he ordered the ship, “What’s the matter, lieutenant?”

Henry’s voice sounded shaky over the speakers, and James felt the tell-tale tingling of dread at the pit of his stomach – an instinct honed by battle, sharpened again out here in the Black.

“I… you best come up here, Sir. It’s bad.”

* * *

Henry Collins was lying in a crash couch in _Erebus’s_ sickbay. He kept telling himself that, because whenever he opened his eyes, they told him a different story.

He was lying in a crash couch in Erebus’s sickbay. Dr. Stanley was with him – he spoke to Collins sometimes, evidently not sure if Collins could hear him. There was a ship of silicone and metal, a solid hull, fire-retardant foam and anti-spalling webbing between Collins and the endless black. There were bright neon lights and terminals on the walls. There were the familiar faces of his fellow crewmembers. He kept telling himself that, over and over.

When he opened his eyes, he saw the stars.

It had started a day or so after coming back onboard _Erebus_. He’d completed twenty-three EVAs in his UNN career – some during battle, with the ship under thrust and the threat of debris constantly at the back of his mind. He’d done EVAs with Jupiter looming above him, red and swirling, and out in the Black where the sun was just a bright star among many. He had never feared the void beyond the reasonable caution it inspired. He was an experienced sailor.

He was also, for all intents and purposes, blind.

It was not, Dr. Goodsir had assured him, due to any physical or neurological issue with his eyes or with his brain, at least none their med-scanners could discern. This prompted Henry to recount the things he knew he should be seeing when he opened his eyes as though that would make them appear. It was no use. He saw only the blackness of space, dotted with stars too small to offer warmth or comfort or light.

He thought that was the worst of it, until the stars stopped being the only thing he saw.

It came like a monster from the depths of the sea, visible only in the absence of light against the starry background. Huge, and many-armed, and eyeless, its form slowly filled out Henry’s field of vision. _I’m in a crash couch on Erebus. I’m in sickbay. Dr. Stanley is with me._ It was no use. He wanted to shrink back, half-convinced this was a nightmare, but there was nowhere for him to go. There was only the crash-couch, which he felt but could not see, and the straps holding him in place that felt like extensions of the _thing_ before him.

He couldn’t remember if he screamed. No one came. Only the thing in his field of vision lit up, blue and electric, and opened its mouth, ready to swallow Collins whole.

* * *

“Did you see him?”

“I saw him.”

Francis turned away from the idle viewscreen that had shown Admiral Franklin’s face just a second ago. It had switched back to an image of the space outside, RG1256 nothing more than a small spec in a black void, permeated by stars. Thomas Blanky next to him – mag boots keeping both of them tethered to the deck – had watched the transmission with an impassive face but seemed quietly amused by Francis’s indignation now. Francis huffed.

“Waste of battery power.”

Thomas shrugged, a well-practised antidote to Francis’s temper. “On our present course…”

He left the sentence hanging in the air. They were not alone on the bridge – third lieutenant John Irving was strapped into the gunner’s seat, and the rat-faced electrochemical technician supervisor Hickey, who had been called up earlier by Thomas for some minor maintenance was scurrying around somewhere behind the backrow crew crash couches. Francis debated sending him away again before Admiral Franklin got here. The less people saw them disagree publicly, the better.

On their present course, it wouldn’t matter whether they wasted their battery power now or in five months. Francis agreed with Thomas on that. With Franklin determined to bring them down to the surface of RG1256, every hour took them further away from the ring gate and the promise of safety behind them. Home.

“Lieutenant Fairholme tells me the shuttle has departed _Erebus_ ,” Irving announced from his gunner’s seat, “They’re ninety-five minutes out now.”

It would be less if they could still use the fusion torches. On nothing but a teakettle engine, the distance between the ships had become magnified. Thomas slapped a hand on Francis’s back, hard enough that it would have launched Francis straight across the deck without his boots. “Look lively, Frank.”

If looks could murder, Thomas Blanky would not have survived that comment.

Francis went back to his own crash couch next to the navigator’s console. He had gone over the readings from their transit hundreds of times in the last week. It still didn’t make any sense. When the protomolecule had suspended fusion on Ilus, it had been in response to a fusion reactor blowing up. Simple cause and effect, though a lot of it still sounded suspiciously like magic to Francis. A particle that could change the laws of physics, and that was sentient enough to react to changes on the macro level. But here they were, at the mercy of a technology or an organism they did not understand, and with Franklin insisting they push on, while every Belt-honed survival instinct in Francis was screaming at him to run. This felt different. It felt like a trap.

_Sasa detim du cesh, sasa detim du do. _

The phrase had been thrown around as often as it had been ignored when Francis was young. Still, he felt the truth of it now. There was nothing to be gained from dying bravely, no matter what glory-chasing slingshotters or Admiral Franklin thought.

Thomas joined Francis at the terminals. He kept the shuttle’s flight path open on one screen while going over the math for their planetary approach. They had power enough in their batteries to make it, if they were sensible about it. But Thomas wasn’t known as the best navigator of his time for leaving things to chance.

It was on that secondary screen that Francis first noticed something was off.

“They have a radiation leak,” he said; then, louder, “ _Erebus’s_ shuttle is leaking radiation.”

“That’s impossible. They’re not running nuclear–” Thomas shut up when he saw that _Terror’s_ sensors – despite what he knew to be true and possible – were indeed showing him radiation spikes from the shuttle that was transporting their mission commander, his first lieutenant and his head of security.

“Irving, get me a tightbeam to the shuttle,” Francis ordered. He pulled up the scopes on his own screen now. If _Terror’s_ sensors were to be believed, the radiation had reached levels that would cook a human being in minutes.

“ _Terror_ to _Erebus_ dropship, please respond.” Irving paused, waiting for an answer. “ _Erebus_ dropship, do you copy.”

Nothing. Then – a crackle over the tightbeam. An image flickering up on Irving’s console.

“On the main screen, Irving,” Francis ordered.

“I…”

Francis couldn’t see Irving’s face from where he was sitting. He hauled himself out of his crash couch and launched himself over to Irving. “Get yourself together, lieut–“

He caught sight of Irving’s terminal. It shut him up quickly.

The image was bright, bright blue. First, it looked like a camera malfunction – the saturation too high – but then the strings of light resolved themselves into webbing, which further resolved into –

_Gone and gone and gone and gone._

“Admiral Franklin, do you copy.”

Francis’s voice sounded hollow. He knew it was futile. The interior of the shuttle was still recognisable, with the pilot’s chair front and centre, and the crew seats visible just off to the sides. There were two bright lumps of webbing centred on the crew seats in front of the camera, and one more on the left side. Franklin, Gore, and Byrant, Francis counted, his throat tight.

_Gone and gone and gone and gone._

“Captain, what is–”

Irving’s hands were shaking on his terminal. Francis put a steadying hand on his shoulder, even as dread made him nauseous, worse than the acceleration drugs ever had. “On my screen. Now.” He turned, using the movement to launch himself back towards his crash couch. “Thomas. It’s the protomolecule.”

Thomas cursed. “How did it get onto the shuttle?” He hissed.

“Captain, the shuttle is accelerating. They’re still on an intercept course with _Terror_ , but at their present speed–”

“I know what it _pashang_ means,” Francis roared. The shuttle was going to hit _Terror_ if it didn’t slow down within the next minutes. “How long, lieutenant?”

Irving was typing rapidly on his console. “Seven minutes, Sir. At most.”

“Keep an eye on that estimate, Irving,” Francis ordered. “Mr. Blanky, plot a course for an evasive manoeuvre.”

“Already on it, captain.”

Francis flipped on the ship-wide communications channel. “ _Terror_ crew, brace for high-g manoeuvres. Everyone to a crash couch, _now_.”

The couches would sedate all nonessential crew and pump the rest of them full of juice that would allow them to stay alert even as high-g manoeuvres made their bodies ten times heavier. It was bad enough for Earthers or Martians. For Francis, it was fucking agony. He made sure his own belt sat tightly. For two minutes, nothing could be heard on the bridge except for the heavy breathing of four men and the soft tapping of fingers on Blanky’s terminal. Francis was aware he was gripping the edges of his crash couch rather tightly; yet he couldn’t make himself stop. On the screen of his own terminal, the interior of the shuttle pulsed and pulsed with alien life. Francis thought he saw something like a human hand, reaching out, and quickly looked away.

“Evasion course plotted,” Thomas said. “Implement it,” Francis ordered. The manoeuvre alert sounded. Immediately, _Terror_ shifted, and Francis could feel gravity press him back into his couch the same moment the needles sank into his spine. He was hit by the heady mixture of a heavy weight on his chest and the airiness in his head that came with the drugs as _Terror_ shifted again. His spine felt cold as ice. On the big screen, _Erebus’s_ shuttle blinked past the dot that represented _Terror_.

And then it turned.

Manoeuvrability was key in surviving a battle in space. Anything short of torpedoes relied on the inertia of the enemy ship to do damage, and so battleships came equipped with engines that could pull heavy gs for short bursts of time in quick-fire evasive manoeuvres. Even the _Leonidas_ – too heavy by far for its drive – relied on evasion to a certain extent. The only limit to the kinds of gs modern battleships could pull was their crew: Humans could survive heavy gs for a couple of minutes, and a little while longer while juiced up, but their bodies had limits.

The shuttle flipped faster than _Terror_ ever could have without killing its entire crew, even juiced up as they were. Francis swore. “Thomas…”

“I can’t, it’s too bloody – _fast_.” Thomas was typing furiously. _Terror_ bucked, Francis felt the breath go out him and, on the screen, the shuttle narrowly missed them again. Thomas groaned. “Ah, bloody hell.”

Francis knew what he had to do with the perfect clarity of ice water. He couldn’t tell if it was the juice or the adrenaline that sharpened his focus. “Thomas, get us under thrust. Just enough to stay ahead of the shuttle for a moment. Irving, get out of your seat.”

Irving sat up in his couch. “Sir?”

“Out,” Francis bellowed. Irving scrambled out of his seat the moment Francis felt real thrust gravity return for the first time in a week. His feet connected with the deck with a heavy clunk. He swung into the couch and pulled up weapon’s control.

“Frank…” Thomas warned from the navigator’s seat. Francis grit his teeth. “High temperatures are we only thing we know that can kill that thing.”

Their missiles wouldn’t work – becalmed by the fact that the protomolecule had decided fusion reactions were out of the question – but they did have their railgun. As long as basic magnetic principles still held, the railgun would accelerate metal slugs to a fraction of the speed of light and punch out critical systems on a targeted ship. And if Francis hit the shuttle at the right angle, _Terror’s_ railgun should be able to knock it off its course and into the sun.

“The Admiral is on that ship!” Irving yelled, panic rising in his voice.

“The Admiral _was_ on that ship,” Francis corrected, though he felt nauseous just thinking about it. When the protomolecule got its hand on a human body, that body didn’t remain human for long. It became fuel. That’s all the poor sods on the dropship were now. Francis wasn’t about to let _Terror_ join them.

He passed _Terror_ the target information, then waited for her to come up with a firing solution. When she returned one, his fingers hesitated over the fire controls – but only for a second. They couldn’t afford to stay under thrust on battery power for much longer.

He fired.

The distances in space meant that nothing was instantaneous. The fraction of a delay was enough to let Francis’s mind spool through a number of possible regrets – he’d called it too soon, the image might have been corrupted, there had to be a rational explanation for the behaviour of the shuttle that wasn’t the protomolecule – before the slug punched through the dropship’s teakettle drive with expert precision. The dropship spun, unable to correct its course without manoeuvring thrusters. Francis’s eyes followed it closely as it left _Terror_ behind. Irving – who by all rights should have gotten his sorry behind into a crash couch minutes ago – hovered by his side, mouth still half open in shock.

“If that thing so much twitches to make another pass at us, you hit it with the railgun, understood? We keep throwing slugs at it until it’s more holes than ship.” Francis ceded Irving’s seat back to him. His hands were shaking, from the drugs and the stress and the realisation of what he’d just done. He would have given the world for just one nuclear missile right now. “And get me Fitzjames on _Erebus_ ,” he ordered.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Translations**
> 
> Sasa detim du cesh, sasa detim du do - Know when to chase, know when to go.  
> pashang - fucking, fuck, etc.
> 
>   
> **Notes**
> 
> Yes, even in the 24th century, Prince is still the hottest shit. I mean, if the Belter word for singing is derived from Adele, James can be a Prince fan. 
> 
> For your listening pleasure, please also consider [Port Isaac’s Fisherman’s Friends singing The Leaving of Liverpool](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hn-BmHku2QM). Yes, I will put shanties in everything I write. 
> 
> If you want to learn more about zero-g workouts, there’s a cool episode from a [NASA podcast](https://www.nasa.gov/johnson/HWHAP/the-zero-g-workout).
> 
> You might have noticed the chapter count going up. This is my first multi-chapter fic in a while, and I shuffled some things around while editing, which means this fic is now ten chapters long instead of seven. It’ll mean a little bit more fic for you guys, which I hope you don’t mind.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In the aftermath of discovery, the crew struggles to make sense of their new situation.

When a team of unscrupulous, dubiously affiliated Earther scientists decided to use the one and a half million Belter population of Eros as lab rats to test the protomolecule’s capabilities, Francis had just returned to Earth from advancement training with the Bush shipyards on modifications to the _Truman_ -class dreadnought software. The news of the discovery – whether it was called a weapon or an organism – had spread through the planetside cadre of officers in awed whispers and shuddering musings of what such a discovery might portend. As a lieutenant, Francis was privy to a number of command meetings where the admirals spoke of the _asset_ _Eros_ , its strategical value to Earth and Mars, and how it might be exploited. _Asset_. As though there weren’t people on the station, suffering, even as Earth divvied up the spoils. It sickened Francis. When Eros started heading for Earth under its own power, Francis considered humanity about ripe for the extinction-level event.

Earth was, of course, saved at the last minute – she always was, untouchable, high and _pashang_ mighty.

After the incident, when Earth and Mars and the Belt had all retreated to their respective corners, Francis Crozier, for the first time since he stepped on an Earthbound shuttle in Ceres’s port, contacted his relatives in the Belt. It was a strange time to come back to family. The wave of Belter solidarity that had swept the stations and asteroids even had a home for a black sheep like him, and for a while he’d corresponded with cousins on Ceres, on Ganymede and Calisto, as far out as Titan and Europa. They brought him into the vast mythology developing around Eros, the songs and slogans, the prayers and legends. He had glimpsed the home he had left behind, and he had not recognised himself in it, either.

But Francis Crozier thought of Eros when he returned to his cabin at the end of third shift, long after he should have retired, exhausted and sore from the high-g manoeuvre and the drugs in his metabolism. The crash was coming. He could feel it approaching with the inevitability of a pendulum on the backswing. The thoughts that had churned and churned in his mind the last hours were slowing, still going round and round but losing momentum with every lap of the ecliptic.

The protomolecule had weaponised Eros, consuming the biomass of the station – _Belters_ , people who could have been his family, who could have been _him_ – to make itself into a projectile and fling itself at Earth. It was painfully clear to Francis that it had attempted the same with _Erebus’s_ dropship: the protomolecule had consumed Franklin, and Gore, and Bryant, and made the shuttle into a projectile destined for _Terror_.

Fitzjames had ordered a sweep of _Erebus_. The man had been beside himself when Francis had gotten him on the line – shouting and accusing Francis of all manner of things in front of his assembled bridge crew before Francis could even open his mouth. When Francis did, he shut up rather quickly. The look on his face had been apologetic, but he had not apologised to Francis. 

Until they could be sure that _Erebus_ was clean, Fitzjames had ordered the ship quarantined and all crew confined to their quarters when not on shift. Exercise time had been cut, which was a drastic measure on a ship not under thrust – they wouldn’t be able to maintain this for longer than a week or two and still be able to make way under thrust after that, not without endangering the crew. When Francis had last seen James at the end of the second shift, he’d looked as pale as a ghost, and his hands had been shaking.

A chime from his hand terminal distracted Francis. He realised he’d been muttering under his breath again, the same prayer his cousin on Titan had taught him. _Da showxa, milowda_. This is how we say it. _Gone and gone and gone and gone._

When Francis picked up his hand terminal, he found he had a message from Fitzjames.

_Can’t sleep._

Francis rubbed at his eyes, floating down into his crash couch like the embrace of a lover. _Christ_ but his back ached. He heard a couple of joints in his spine pop as he stretched out on the soft gel of the couch.

_Can’t sleep_. What was that supposed to mean? What was Francis supposed to do with that information?

The part of him that wasn’t entirely obstinate knew, of course, what Fitzjames wanted – what he’d wanted since his first clumsy attempts at socialising with Francis outside the wardroom, what they’d continued on Medina. Still, Francis couldn’t help the bitter taste of the accusations Fitzjames had flung at him – pale-faced and chewing the inside of his cheek – about all manners of sinister intentions Francis supposedly harboured.

Would Francis have drawn different conclusions, had their situations been reversed? Probably not. He knew what it looked like.

He sighed and requested a tightbeam connection relayed to Fitzjames, wherever he was on _Erebus_ right now.

“Francis.”

Fitzjames looked even worse than he had several hours ago. From the looks of it, he was lying flat on the crash couch in his quarters, belted in tightly, with his hair open and floating around his face like a dark halo. His hand terminal appeared clipped to the ceiling above his berth. Francis hadn’t seen the man at anything less than perfectly put together, and the glimpse he got of him now, more vulnerable for being alone, softened something in him.

“How are things on _Terror_?” Fitzjames asked. There was a stiffness to him, even in repose, that Francis took note of.

“All well,” Francis said gently, “How is _Erebus_?”

Fitzjames gave a cursory nod. “All is…” He exhaled rather suddenly. “I’m not going to pretend, Francis. All is not well.”

Francis felt himself moved by the rather sudden urge to reach out and put a steadying hand to Fitzjames’s shoulder, the same way he had done on Medina, but they were separated by hundreds of kilometres of hard vacuum. “Now, James…”

“Oh, please, Francis. We’re both alone. Can we speak honestly for a few minutes?” Fitzjames was a far cry from his wardroom dinner personality now. He looked younger. He looked angrier. He looked like a different man. Francis closed his mouth, swallowed. “Of course.”

Fitzjames sighed. He closed his eyes again, and for a second Francis was sure he had simply passed out then and there. Then Fitzjames opened his eyes, and Francis realised he was crying – his eyes were swimming in liquid held there by the surface tension until Fitzjames blinked angrily a few times and the tears floated away.

“We have – we have–” He swallowed heavily. “We have lost Admiral Franklin.”

_I have killed Admiral Franklin,_ Francis though. It was true enough. He wondered what he’d tell Sophia if he ever had the chance to see her again. _I didn’t wait. I had to make a decision. I’m sorry_.

He didn’t even know what to tell Fitzjames. The man clearly craved some kind of comfort, and Francis couldn’t think of anything to say that would make Fitzjames feel less alone than he was right now. “We have,” he said dumbly, and cursed himself. Were their roles reversed, Fitzjames would surely find some ingenious words of comfort for Francis.

“I am beginning to think you are right,” Fitzjames said, “Going on is a fool’s errand. If we want to save the remaining crew, we have to turn back.” He rubbed at his eyes, dislodging the tears that were still stubbornly clinging there.

Thomas Blanky had said something similar to Francis earlier. It had involved projections of _Terror’s_ battery power after their evasive manoeuvres, and the words _point of no return_ a damning sentence over their heads. Still, to hear the words _you are right_ from Fitzjames felt gratifying, even knowing what Francis would have to tell him in response. Francis had never wanted to be right like this.

“Yes, ah–” Francis tried to think of how to best phrase the churning worries that had crystalized into some very clear facts over the last hours. “We exhausted a large share of _Terror’s_ battery power earlier.”

“Oh,” Fitzjames said quietly. Clearly, he hadn’t thought of that yet. He wasn’t going to like what Francis had to say next. “But James, we – we can’t go back. Not until we know for sure that we are not carrying any protomolecule.”

Fitzjames closed his eyes again. “Of course,” he said, the weariness sapping strength even from his voice. He seemed shrunken, a pocket version of himself. Something one carried to safety.

Francis hated himself for his impotence in that moment. He was trapped – _Terror’s_ battery power would fail in a few months, and they’d reach the point of no return, when they no longer had enough power to flip them back towards the ring gate, before that. If _Terror_ had been his only concern, he would already be on his merry way back to the ring gate and Sol behind it. He was reasonably sure that there was no protomolecule on _Terror_ , because there would have been no sense in the protomolecule’s attempted attack on the ship in that case.

He sighed. He was making the same mistake he’d told Thomas and Lieutenant Irving to avoid making – he was attributing motivation to a life form that should have no capacity for higher reasoning.

Fitzjames must have been following a similar line of thought. “Francis, you should – you should take _Terror_ and go. Go back.”

Leave the potentially infected _Erebus_ behind. Francis laughed, no humour in his voice. “No, James. I’m not going to abandon _Erebus_ while there’s still crew on the ship.”

The idea tasted bitter in his mouth. It was the coward’s impulse – to gather him and his own and run at the first sign of trouble. Francis hoped to God he wasn’t that kind of man.

“You could save seventy men,” Fitzjames said, “And sacrifice another seventy or so. Who knows, _Erebus_ might make it.”

He said ‘ _Erebus’_ as if that didn’t include himself, as if he hadn’t spared a single thought for his own survival. It made Francis want to shake him, to remind him that a life wasn’t something one simply threw away, but he couldn’t help but admire the impulse. He’d never wanted to think of Fitzjames as _selfless_. When Francis did, it was like someone had suddenly shone a light on him.

It was an impossible calculation. Francis had envied Admiral Franklin, until command – with all its terrible responsibilities – had fallen in his lap. It was easy to hate a man for the cold-hearted calculations of acceptable losses when one wasn’t forced to make those calculations. The capacity for sending men to their deaths was supposed to be an Earther trait. Now Francis was forced to confront the question if he had it in himself.

“Lose seventy crew for sure or potentially lose all crew,” Francis said quietly. It shouldn’t be a choice anyone had to make – and yet it was his. His only point of guidance was his steadfast belief in one fact. “ _Terror_ won’t leave you. We have a while before we reach Blanky’s point of no return. That’s time to figure something out.”

James nodded, and Francis pretended not to see the relief on his face. It was good to know there was even a modicum of self-preservation in him. If a little vulnerability with Francis was what he needed to look strong in front of the crew, Francis would give him that.

_And who comforts you?_ Francis shook off that thought. He was a captain. He was the leader of the expedition. His post came with many benefits, but the possibility to unburden himself was not one of them. A weaker part of his mind still pictured it: James’s eyes softening, and the Earther inflection of his voice murmuring _we’ll get through it together, Francis_ – he’d say _Francis_ in that funny way of his, pronouncing the vowels to the point where it became comical and made Francis’s heart twist in a strange way – _I’ll watch out for you_.

“Dr. Goodsir said our med-scanners can test for it, if we can get a live sample. He’ll take blood from Collins and Morfin tomorrow, since they are – well, there was no explanation for their symptoms until now.” Francis knew this – both James and Goodsir had told him earlier in the day – but he let James recount it once more. He seemed to find it calming. “I don’t want to say we might get lucky, but we might–”

“I understand,” Francis said quietly. A positive test would very likely be a death sentence for Morfin and Collins, but it might save the rest of _Erebus’s_ crew. There was no known way to cure a protomolecule infection.

“Really, you’d think the Navy would allow their med-scanners to test for the protomolecule.” James had shifted gears – he sounded angry instead of despaired now. Francis shrugged, feeling the riptide of James’s breakdown and trying not to get sucked along. One of them had to remain standing, to save the other from drowning. “It’s classified. And after the gates opened, it didn’t seem like there would be a need for it anymore.”

The protomolecule had all but vanished. The live samples had been destroyed. Venus – its breeding ground – was cold and lifeless now.

“How can you be so calm about all his?” James demanded, frowning now. Francis knew that mix of emotions too well: the anger chased by grief chased by exhaustion and then anger again. It had left Francis in his cabin often enough, exhausted and shaking and wondering how any man could bear responsibility without breaking over it. Francis didn’t feel _calm_.

He shouldn’t rise to it, he knew. He should tell James to go to sleep.

“Believe me,” Francis said, measuring his words carefully like the cuts of a knife, “ _Calm_ is the last thing I’m feeling right now.”

He thought of the one and a half million lives on Eros again. One and a half million, and still humanity hadn’t learned to leave the protomolecule alone. The Belt had made songs out of the screams of the dying on Eros and Francis, its worst son, honoured them by coming out here and making the same mistakes again.

“I’m sorry,” James said, “God, Francis, I’m sorry. I behaved like an ass.”

Francis snorted, having left his capacity for humour several astronomical units behind him. “You’re exhausted, James. It’s alright.”

“I meant earlier,” James said, “I – I was so shocked. I said things I shouldn’t have said. Can you–” He swallowed. “Can you forgive me?”

There it was – the soft expression in his eyes that Francis had pictured. It should have been hard to make out on the tiny screen, but Francis’s mind could fill in the details. He might be weak for craving it but it did calm his heart, in the way that only Sophia had ever been able to. Sophia, and perhaps Ross. He realised he was reaching the limits of his capacity to keep his own breakdown at bay.

“You should sleep,” Francis advised James.

It was a strange order – not even really an order as much as a wish that James would take care of himself, since Francis could not do so. They were all lonely and afraid and reaching out towards each other.

“Maybe I will.” As though to spite his own ambiguity, James yawned, which drew a genuine smile from Francis. “Rest well, James.”

On the tiny screen floating above Francis’s head, the grainy image of James Fitzjames smiled. “You, too, Francis.”

The image flickered out, replaced by the idle patters of the screen saver on Francis’s terminal. Francis didn’t see them. The image of James, smiling, had burned itself into his mind.

* * *

Henry Collins was belted into the crash couch of his berth. He knew this, because Harry Goodsir had told him so – it must have been a while ago, maybe twenty minutes or two hours. Maybe two days. Time felt odd to him. There was an awareness of it, but in a way that was different from how he used to perceive it – like time flowed one way, and he sat perpendicular to it.

His sight had returned, though he still couldn’t see what was right in front of him – instead of the starless void and something swallowing him, he saw _Erebus_ again, its hallways like veins running through a solid-metal body. His awareness reached from the airlock on the third level all the way up to the sickbay on fourth, and down to his quarters on deck two. He couldn’t see everything on the decks and seeing was a bad way of describing his awareness of space and movement, but he perceived most of what happened in those areas.

There were other places, pulsing at the edge of his consciousness. There was a small pinprick close to him, in the crew quarters on deck two, that his tendril-like mind wanted to reach out to. He wasn’t quite there yet, but he would be, soon. That would be a rejoicing. Other pinpricks slumbered, too small even to call out to him. He let them rest. In time, he would find them again.

The hulking presence, thousands of kilometres away from him, overshadowed them all.

_Break the hull. Break the hull, and feast._

It was a song. It was a hymn. It was a calling. Soon, he knew, he would succumb to it.

There was a place, down on deck one, that he wanted to reach more than he wanted to follow the screaming voice in his mind. The lightweight, silver-zinc cells called to him most of his waking hours. He could feel the buzz of them, the steady discharge as they fed the ships systems, the lighting, the heating, the movement of water and oxygen. He _needed_ that energy. He was so hungry – but was hunger even the right word? Was it hunger he felt, or something deeper, something more urgent than a simple appetite?

He wanted to _conquer_.

Henry Collins came back to himself with a start. He lost himself for hours like that, if his hand terminal – Goodsir had activated the screen reader for him – could still be trusted. Hours of stalking the ship with eyes that couldn’t be his, an awareness that went beyond what should be possible. What was happening to him?

Alone in his quarters, Henry sank deeper into his crash couch and shivered. He didn’t see the dark tendrils creeping from his body, nor the bioluminescence of the vines that covered nearly all the room now.

* * *

The mutiny began three hours into the third shift, just as Francis considered that maybe he’d overworked himself long enough for the day.

They’d been on the float a little over a month now, and RG1256 was so close that Francis could begin to make out shapes of continents without using the magnification of the viewscreen. He’d ordered two probes sent out, but they wouldn’t get to the planet much faster than _Erebus_ and _Terror_. It was a one-way trip for both probes – battery-powered as they were, they would collect data until they burned up in the planet’s atmosphere.

The crew had taken to calling the planet Lamos, after some stronghold mentioned in the Odyssey. Crozier wondered which crew member had spent hours combing through an encyclopaedia before they came up with a suitably ominous yet obscure name, but he could understand the impulse that had brought on the naming – RG1265 was a mouthful to say. He hadn’t inquired further, so as not to encourage them.

All contact with _Erebus_ had been cut off except on the highest level – the officers, and Francis and James themselves. Francis feared news of the protomolecule spreading – the last thing he wanted was mass panic, which would waste precious time and oxygen. The smooth running of the ship should be the crew’s only priority. Francis didn’t trust the Earthers to understand that survival was a group effort: he’d seen to many Earthers scramble to save themselves at the first sound of an environmental alert. In the Belt, you learned quickly to set aside differences when survival demanded it, or you didn’t survive long at all.

It was Edward who came to him with the news. Francis hated being right these days.

“Some of the crew members have assembled in the mess, Sir. They seem to know that something is wrong with _Erebus_.”

Out of all the men he’d served with, Francis liked Edward for his calm and pragmatic manner. There had been a time when Francis had thought him a pushover for his agreeable character, but it turned out that underneath, he carried the most important characteristic: a bloody good sense of right and wrong, one that the UNN had been unable to shake out of him so far. Francis was working on getting him to act on it a little bit more often.

“Doesn’t take a genius to figure that out,” Francis muttered. Of course something was wrong with _Erebus_. Suspending communications to save battery power was a drastic measure, and one that didn’t even save that much battery power. It hadn’t so much been a question of _if_ but _when_ the crew would start demanding answers.

James and he had agreed to tell the officers the details of what they had seen on the shuttle. That was only fair, and only sensible. The rest of the crew was told of the unfortunate engine malfunction of Admiral Franklin’s dropship, the result of poor maintenance on the teakettle engine – the superheated steam drive that propelled the dropships in the absence of functioning fusion torches. Lieutenant Fairholme of _Erebus_ had come down with a similar seizure to Collins’s and Morphin’s not to long after the command meeting. Privately, Francis feared that the entire command of _Erebus_ had been infected.

He tried never to dwell too long on that thought. It came with a sharp shout of his heart, urging him to throw caution to the wind, commandeer one of the dropships and get James before it was too late. He quashed that impulse. It was not befitting of a captain. James was a captain in his own right, and more than capable of taking care of himself. He didn’t need Francis to protect him. And Francis certainly shouldn’t be making decisions based on his impulse to protect him.

“What are they saying, Edward? What do they want?”

The terminal of Francis’s desk still had Thomas Blanky’s math open, outlining their fate in a few cold, hard numbers. Like Eros, Franklin’s dropship had returned to haunt them. How it did that without a functioning drive was beyond Francis, as long as he didn’t want to imagine fuel in the form of Admiral Franklin. They could repel it with the railgun – for now. Every shot of the railgun cost them battery power, both for spinning up the projectile and for keeping their ship on course. Thomas’s projections became less and less inspiring after every maneuvre.

Francis closed the file before he stepped away from the table, mag boots clicking on the metal floor.

“They say they want the truth, Sir,” Edward said unhappily. Francis resisted the urge to roll his eyes. They always wanted truth, and never knew what to do with it. “Then let’s hear it. Lead the way, lieutenant.”

Francis dreaded the image of a full mess. He forced himself to walk – _walk_ , not float, he had an image to maintain before the crew now – at a steady pace, looking self-assured and in control. Edward at his side tried for the same, but he didn’t have years of experience to back him up. It would come in time.

When they got to the mess, it was not the full room Francis had pictured.

Not a full room, but enough.

All around, seven members of the crew had gathered at two of the tables that folded back into the wall. They were huddled over the small tables, speaking in hushed voices. The mess was as cramped as every other space on the ship – every gram of mass meant additional fuel needed to accelerate, and so ships were constructed first with fuel efficiency and then the crew’s comfort in mind. Francis took note of every face before stepping through the doorway.

“What’s this?”

He’d debated whether to talk them down from it or yell at them. He’d decided on the latter mostly because it came easier to him and would be more believable. He wasn’t patient. They didn’t have time for a mutiny. Not if they wanted to survive.

For a moment, no one spoke. A couple of people shot up at the barking voice of their captain. Others stared him down defiantly – or tried to. Francis could stare longer. He could stare all day if that’s how they wanted it played. Only one of them held their gaze. Something tugged at Francis’s memory when he saw the face of the electrochemical technician Hickey.

“Pardon me, Sir.”

It was Sergeant Tozer who spoke, one of their marines. Francis didn’t trust UNN marines – they always seemed to be compensating for the fact that unlike their Martian counterparts, they didn’t get to run around in goliath power armour. Francis did note, however, that Tozer was carrying his recoilless rifle, optimized for use in zero-g, even though he wasn’t on duty. Francis noted all of it.

“Yes, Sergeant?”

“We – the men – we’ve been talking. And we want the truth, Sir.”

Tozer wasn’t the one who’d come up with this, Francis decided. He might have the gun, but he didn’t have the arguments, and arguments counted in this kind of battle. He sounded like he was reading lines somebody else had fed him.

Francis’s eyes twitched back to the electrochemical technician. Hickey grinned at him, like Francis had told a particularly funny joke.

He’d been on the bridge, Francis realised. When Francis had shot down the admiral’s shuttle. Blanky had called Hickey to the bridge for some maintenance, but Hickey hadn’t been there when Francis debriefed Irving. Francis should have remembered sooner. Hickey must have heard the revelation of what they were dealing with. The earliest he could have slipped away was when Francis fired at the shuttle and Thomas ended the evasive manoeuvres.

But Hickey could have told his disciples. He could have told them everything and riled them up into a real fury. This was a game to him. He threw them a bone to see what Francis would do. Francis felt a muscle in his jaw twitch from suppressed rage. Back on Ceres, a man like Hickey would have found himself tossed out of an airlock a long time ago. Hell, Francis would have done it himself with gusto. No one would have minded.

Francis wasn’t here to play games. “You want the truth?” He asked. A few of the crew nodded, evidently surprised that he should be so receptive to their demands so quickly. “I’ll tell you something true.”

Francis turned to Edward, keeping his voice up to make sure the would-be mutineers heard him.

“Everybody who is still in the mess in ten minutes will receive punitive duty until further notice, and they will have to face trial upon our return to Earth.” Edward nodded, though he didn’t look happy. “That will be all, Edward.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Translations**  
>  Da showxa, milowda. - this is how we say [it].


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The rules of the game have changed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've included a small content warning in the chapter notes at the end.

“Is it time again?”

In the undulating darkness of the berth, Harry Goodsir could just barely make out Collins’s figure between the vines and crystal growth protruding from his body. Harry’s vac suit came equipped with a torch, but he tried to only use it for light when inserting the needle. It felt profane to disturb the darkness otherwise, like loud voices by a deathbed.

The voice that came from Collins’s bed sounded barely human.

Harry had grown accustomed to the strange tone over the last days. The growths must have reached his vocal cords at last, not taking speech from Collins but distorting it into something double-layered, alien, that haunted Harry’s dreams when he found the precious time to sleep.

“Yes, Henry.”

He tried to keep his voice calm, despite it all. He imagined it must be hard enough for Collins to be isolated for these long stretches of time, to have the only living being that came to see him wear a full vac suit kit and communicate exclusively via the crackling speakers. The least Harry could do was show him some kindness.

It was hard, placing the needle. He had to take careful steps around Collins, looking for places his mag boots would still keep him tethered to the deck, where the growth of vines was not too thick. Harry took deep, measured breaths to keep his hands from shaking as he cleared away the growth on Collins’s arm to get to a vein. Collins didn’t even twitch, but a small shudder went through his body when Harry switched on the dialyser. The quiet hum of the machine was the only sound for a while after that.

“Lieutenant Le Vesconte told me that Lamos appears to be about three-quarters the diameter of Earth, you know.” Harry never was very good with the silence. “That means the gravity will be tolerable, I understand.”

He watched the percentages on the dialyser tick upwards. 31% of blood filtered. They weren’t sure if it helped, but Dr Stanley had given him leave to try with a weary wave of his hand and the admission that it “ _can’t do more harm than good, at this point_ ”. Harry hoped that, if nothing else, filtering Collins’s blood would slow the infection. To what end, he didn’t know.

“Ilus had a lizard analogue that could mimic sounds. I’ve always found mimicry a fascinating trait.” It was easier, remembering all the publications he’d read leading up to this journey. He’d pored over every word, even corresponded briefly with Dr Elvi Okoye, biologist on the Royal Charter Energy assignment to Ilus. Her testimonial, however horrifying, had only strengthened his resolve to come out to the new frontier himself. He couldn’t in his wildest dreams have imagined he’d be spending his time tending to his dying shipmates. “I wonder if it was a defensive mechanism or aggressive mimicry. We might never know.”

Collins’s eyes flew open suddenly. Harry startled only a little bit. He was used to these fits of consciousness by now. He put a hand on Collins’s arm. The ultra-flexible material of the military-grade vac suit even conveyed some tactile feedback, but to Harry it still felt too impersonal.

“Will you stay with me, doctor?”

“Of course,” Harry said. In truth, he had about forty minutes left before he had to pack up his tools and move on. It would be a long day, leading into a short night for him to rest and then do it all again. He spent very little time thinking of the wonders he might see on Lamos, if they would get there at all. He hoped they would.

“You can keep talking,” Collins rasped, “About the biology. ‘S comforting.”

Harry nodded, and settled back down. “Of course.”

The number on the screen of the dialyser ticked upwards again. 42% filtered. Around Harry, bioluminescent vines glittered and undulated in patterns that were beyond his capacity to understand. Even now, his mind longed to catalogue, to superimpose structure on the unknown. It might help someone, in the future, if they found themselves in a similar situation, though Harry wished it on no one.

“Life forms on Ilus make use of bichiral protein structures. It’s all very different from our ecosystem. I read that the mosquito analogue of the planet can sting a human and will drop dead not twenty minutes later. It can’t eat our blood.”

He had Okoye’s article on cross-biome infection on his hand-terminal but found the topic too close to their current predicament. Instead, he imagined what kinds of stories he might tell his brother’s children about the strange new worlds that humanity had discovered and would discover. If Collins listened, he gave no sign of it. Harry chose to believe that he did.

* * *

The UNN Navy handbook on shipboard safety included a subsection on fire hazards in space. This section detailed all situations which constituted a fire hazard aboard UNN ships and how to best prevent them, with emergency protocols detailing how to respond should a fire break out despite everyone’s best efforts. The section did not include a paragraph on why fire in space was bad in the first place – that was considered so elemental a truth that the UNN had not seen the need to repeat it in print, much like they wouldn’t instruct their sailors to keep breathing.

Captain James Fitzjames of the UNN _Erebus_ was watching the fire ravage through _Erebus’s_ corridor subsections 2.e-g with a grim satisfaction. The bioluminescence of the vines that had sprouted there was giving way to a much brighter, much more welcome kind of destruction – the comforting crackling of fire as it worked its way through its fuel.

“I know we all miss shooting at Martians,” Henry said over James’s hand terminal, “But this really is a bit extreme, Jas.”

His teasing felt rehearsed. Henry was sleepless, same as James – like James, he’d had a lot of responsibility dropped in his lap, with Gore dead and Fairholme out of commission. Confined to separate shifts, they could only speak remotely now. While coordinating the decontamination this morning, James had noted the dark circles under Henry’s eyes, but he’d also noticed a slight blue tint to his friend’s skin that he’d ascribed to poor lighting. Now he wasn’t so sure anymore but didn’t know how to bring it up.

The vines had started growing from Collins’s quarters, and some days later from Morfin’s, a couple of weeks ago. Goodsir – the only one still allowed access to the infected patients – assured James that both men were still alive, if not wholly conscious, and James wondered whether to be relieved or horrified at that. The corridors on the second level, where most of the crew were housed, had taken on a strange, eerie atmosphere – at once beautiful in the pale bioluminescence of the vines, and absolutely horrifying in how alien it was.

It was eating his ship.

James realised he was chewing the inside of his cheek at the thought. The protomolecule was eating his ship, all while he couldn’t even figure out who of his crew it was going to infect next. They’d had to confine three more crew to their quarters, condemning them to the same lonely fate that Morfin and Collins now suffered.

“How is it looking, Dundy?”

Corridors 2.e-g had of course been sealed off _before_ James had set fire to them. To finish decontamination, they would simply vent the entire area, then pump air back into it once they were sure there were no smouldering fires left to reignite and ruin their days.

“Temperature’s climbing, but _Erebus_ is holding steady.”

It pained James that the measures to protect his crew now separated him from his friend, but should something happen to either of them, the other needed to be as far away from that danger as possible. _Erebus_ was seriously short-staffed when it came to officers.

“Good. If it looks like something is about to break, vent her before we do any permanent damage.”

“Copy that.”

The good news was that the organism was anaerobic. Goodsir had assured James of that. It could be transmitted by touch, but not through the air. The decontamination measures were the first steps James had ordered undertaken to make sure nobody touched the fucking thing. But he noticed it in more and more places now.

With the lights down to sixty-five percent, the bioluminescence of the organism shone brighter than the actual lamps in some places. It crept out of ventilation shafts and under doorways. It worked its way up and down the elevator shafts that doubled as corridors. Sometimes, James woke from nightmares where he found that it had wrapped its way around his crash couch and was choking him. He didn’t tell Francis about those when they talked, though sometimes he wanted to, when Francis looked at him with eyes too blue by far for James to handle. The eyes that found James with his heart in his throat, tongue-tied and longing for something he dare not put into words.

“Ah, crap.” Henry sounded weary rather than alarmed, but James still shot up in his seat. “What is it?”

The camera in corridor 2.f, where Henry and his team had set up, showed Henry crouched down before a door, rubbing his eyes wearily. “It’s Walter.”

On James’s second screen, he could see where Henry was pointing his hand terminal so that James could see the vines creeping out from under the door of Fairholme’s quarters.

“Don’t touch that,” James said. Henry laughed, hollowly. “I won’t.”

He got up again. “Anyway. Temperature’s up another fifteen degrees.”

James was tired. He was always tired, these days. Sometimes, he felt it so acutely that he had to excuse himself for a few minutes to stop himself from hyperventilating. Stanley had prescribed some of them drugs for this special shipside panic – claustrophobia, stress, panic disorders – but James feared word of his particular weakness reaching the crew. They couldn’t think less of him. Watching Henry and the decontamination, now, he found the thought of staying upright another minute unbearable.

He drew himself up, anyway. “I think another ten minutes should do it. Leave it in vacuum for at least half an hour.”

“Will do,” Henry said.

James exited the bridge as quickly as he dared. He planned to make a hasty retreat to his own quarters but only managed the public privy in section four before nausea overcame him. He locked the door behind himself, wedged himself into the smallest space he could find and put his head between his knees. He hated the weightlessness. He hated feeling constantly adrift, with nothing to cling to. He hated the helplessness, and the sleepless nights, and losing crew like water running through his fingers. Gritting his teeth against the tremor in his hands and limbs, he closed his eyes and concentrated on breathing.

When it was through him, he grabbed a couple of wet wipes from the dispenser – he would have preferred cool water, but that was not to be had in zero-g – and wiped down his face. Then he looked up at the mirror fixed to the bulkhead. The man looking back at him was a stranger.

It had never been quite as bad as this. Even when the anti-spalling webbing on the Cornwallis had failed and James had gotten rather more friendly with a piece of shrapnel after a Gauss round punched a hole through the quarterdeck, James hadn’t been afraid of space. He’d taken the medical leave and moved on; even used the episode for a career advancement seminar on Luna. Yet, here, with all the tools at his disposal to bend the situation to his will, the command _his_ – he was failing. What a time to find out he was not cut out for command. He was good at shooting things, and better at telling a story about it afterwards. This – the desperate, futile struggle to keep seventy men alive – was not his forte.

The corridors on the way back to his quarters were empty. Whatever crew wasn’t confined to quarters was either in CIC or down by the crew quarters with Henry. To James, it felt like the extension of a nightmare he couldn’t wake from. He missed being around people. He would have given the world even for a miserable wardroom dinner spent trying to impress Francis, who would remain obstinate as ever.

Francis. Thinking of him felt like a break in the clouds of James’s panic-stricken mind. Back in his quarters, he checked his hand terminal – it was almost time for the second shift, and likely Francis would be up – before requesting a tightbeam relayed to Francis’s quarters on _Terror_.

* * *

Francis woke up sweating, his cock achingly hard. He must have dreamt of Sophia again.

It was dark in his quarters; only the status lights of his terminal and the emergency lights over his door giving off a faint glow. He’d wrapped himself tightly in his blanket while he slept, and now he felt near stifled by it. Frustrated, both by the heat of the blanket and his erection, he kicked off the blanket. It began floating away slowly.

His dream came back to him as he took himself in hand. He hissed at the sensation. Soft skin, and a cocky smile that faltered as pretty red lips wrapped around his cock. He groaned at the dream-remembered heat of it. Sophia had never kissed him like that, but there had been times when he’d wanted her to.

His cock was throbbing in his hand, begging him to finish quickly. He so rarely found himself confronted with this problem on the float that the desperation hit him all the stronger for it. He gripped himself tightly, eyes screwed shut tightly, trying to recapture the blissed arousal of the dream. _Christ_. Only the belts of his crash couch kept the bucking of his hips from launching him out of his bunk. It had been too long, and Francis – with the dream-remembered heat around his cock, the image of carding his fingers through soft brown hair in his mind’s eye – felt he wasn’t going to last very long, which was a small relief. The muscles in his stomach and his thighs were clenching as he pressed his feet against the gel of the crash couch.

Brown hair?

Francis could only spare the image a passing thought. Head still foggy from sleep, he was single-minded in seeking out his pleasure. He tightened his grip, grazed the head of his cock on the upstroke and grunted. God but he hadn’t been so desperate since his teenage days on Ceres, chasing after girls who’d sneer at him and boys who’d tell him to find an Earther to fuck down by the docks.

His hand terminal chirped.

Francis cursed. Whoever had the nerve to interrupt him right now better had a _pashang_ emergency to back them up. He pulled up his pants.

“Acknowledge,” he ordered the ship, his face flushed warm.

The screen over his bunk flickered to life, resolving a scrambled image into the familiar face of James Fitzjames, his long brown hair tied back, looking more haggard by the day.

“Francis. Did I wake you?”

With James firmly confined to his shift and Francis working long hours, their schedules intersected less well. Small wonder Francis had missed the beginning of the second shift again. In the weeks since the mutiny, their calls had been irregular but frequent – catching each other at odd hours, whenever they happened to be both awake and not beset by the responsibilities of command. It was a relief to both of them, it seemed, to know there was someone else out there with a similar burden.

“No, I was about to get up,” Francis lied, “What’s the emergency?”

“Oh, it’s nothing like that, I’m – I’m sorry.”

Slowly, the details came together – the familiar image of James’s quarters, the quiet tone of his voice. The sound of it making Francis’s cock twitch in a way that was wholly unprofessional. The dream. Brown hair. The cocky smile. Francis slapped a hand over his mouth.

“Francis?” James sounded concerned.

“I’m alright,” Francis said, and wondered in the same breath if James could guess what Francis had been doing – that he’d been touching himself furtively under the blankets after dreaming about _James’s mouth on his cock_. He couldn’t even look at James’s mouth. His eyes kept wandering back to James’s mouth.

“I – I can call back later,” James said. The soft rumble of his voice, even over the static of the tightbeam, was nearly too much for Francis. He wanted to ignore it and still felt a hot flush wash over his body, embarrassment and arousal mixed together. He wanted James to keep talking to him, no – he wanted James to give him five minutes, just five more minutes alone.

“Francis,” James said, his voice low and concerned, and Francis had to bite back an undignified sound. It spilled out anyway, a low rumble of a moan. Eyes wide, he bit down on one finger covering his mouth, trying to shove the sound back down his throat.

“My God, what’s the matter with you?” James asked, “Are you coming down with something? Is it the gravity drugs?”

Francis closed his eyes, trying to will his erection into nonexistence. Unfortunately, James’s eyes were warm and full of concern, and Francis’s sleep-addled mind seemed determined to make the most of the image that presented itself to him. He shook his head. “It’s nothing James. What did you want?”

“Are you – were you…?” James took a deep, unsteady breath and shook his head, as though admonishing himself. “No, of course not. Forget it.”

“James, please.” Francis couldn’t say with full confidence that he was begging James to spare him the embarrassment. James was teetering on the edge of a realisation he didn’t need to have, shouldn’t have, if they were to keep working together. “Oh my God,” James said. He sounded slightly manic. Francis met the unforgiving gaze of the camera miserably. “ _Please_.”

“Right,” James said. He cleared his throat, looked down. When he looked back up again, the brown of his irises seemed to have disappeared almost completely. It was a trick of the camera, of course, the connection too grainy. It allowed Francis to see things that weren’t there. In his mind, the intensity of James’s gaze on him might mean something, something other than just shock and disgust. In his mind, James might–

“Francis,” James said, his voice low like a warning, or perhaps something else, “Were you jerking off?”

And there it was, the plausible deniability of their encounter gone out the window. If Francis had any self-preservation left, he would hang up right now – he should have shut down the connection at least two minutes ago, while there was still a modicum of his dignity to be preserved. He hadn’t even realised how much he wanted James until his dream presented him with the facsimile, and he’d certainly not wanted James to find out like this.

“Do we have to talk about this?” Francis asked. James laughed, but it sounded hysterical. “Well, what else do you want to talk about?”

_Nothing. I want you to come over here and suck my cock, apparently._

He had just enough presence of mind left to not say that out loud. The expression on his face must have spoken for itself, anyway. James took a deep breath.

“Oh God,” he said in a voice that made Francis shudder all over – he sounded halfway to ruined and not at all, a treacherous part of Francis’s mind supplied, disgusted. No, he sounded far from disgusted. “Francis, you–”

It would be so easy if James were here with him, or at least it would be easier. Francis could have kissed him at the very least. Like this, he was resigned to helplessly staring at the camera, hoping to convey an apology his mouth didn’t quite want to form.

“I don’t mind,” James said quietly. The intensity of the look in his eyes sent another shock of arousal through Francis. “You – don’t?”

He wanted to touch himself. It was unreasonable, for him to be so hard, pinned under James’s gaze. He wanted James to see him, he realised. He had never been the type. His relationships survived his absences, or they didn’t – mostly they didn’t – and it wasn’t like people were lining up to shag the misshapen Belter disappointment and curiosity of the UN Navy.

James shook his head. There was something in the slow, deliberate way he swallowed that made Francis shudder. His hand stole back to his cock. He wrapped his hand tightly around himself, eyes fluttering shut. Then he decided he’d rather be looking at James; James with his mouth half open and his pupils blown wide.

“How are you even hard right now, Christ. That’s so hot,” James panted. He, too, seemed incapable of taking his eyes off of Francis.

Francis’s breath was coming in short, heavy bursts. “Belter trick,” he said, trying to make light of the situation unsuccessfully. He sounded far too desperate, even to his own ears. James was moving as well now – Francis could only see his face down to his shoulders, but he was shifting in his bunk, biting his lip, his eyes flitting back to the camera like he was afraid Francis might disappear any second. Not being able to see what James was doing to himself had Francis’s mind spinning through any number of possibilities. He wanted to see James’s cock, but this – this was more intimate, somehow. He locked eyes with James over the screen and could have lost his mind over his inability to _touch_ him.

“James–” he said, the word almost choking him on its way out of his throat. James’s eyes slid shut when he heard Francis say his name, and his head tipped back to bare the wide expanse of his throat. Francis would have kissed him there, if he could.

He could almost imagine that it was James’s fingers moving quickly and deftly over his cock. He could picture them in perfect detail – their long, nimble grace, the way they would look on his dark pink cock while James jerked him off.

“Francis,” James said, then again, like he was testing the sound of it – “ _Francis_.”

When he fixed his eyes on Francis, the longing in them shocked Francis. He’d never imagined he could be the object of any sort of desire, but there was no mistaking the expression on James’s face.

“Francis, you look – you look bloody gorgeous, I want to – I wish I could kiss you. I’ve thought about it. I want to touch you, want you to touch me–”

His words shook Francis.

“Don’t stop,” he panted, “James, don’t stop.”

He had to close his eyes. He could feel himself nearing his peak, James’s voice in his ear fanning the flames of heat in his groin until, with a shudder running through his body, the pleasure reached its impossible crescendo. He still had the wherewithal to reach for the blanket before it overtook him and he spent in hot spurts, twitching desperately into the tight, encircling heat of his fist. It shook him for a long minute while James continued talking about what he’d do to Francis or what he wanted done to him. Francis couldn’t even parse the meaning of words anymore.

“Did you…?” Eventually, words filtered back into his brain. Francis blinked open his eyes. He nodded. “Mh. You?”

“I…” James blushed. Francis wished to trace the contour of his blush where it would lead him, down James’s chest and everything that lay beyond. “I’m afraid I’m not as used to the lack of gravity.”

“Ah.”

Of course. Francis’s body had whole childhood in low gravity to look back on. For an Earther like James, blood circulation might be an issue. Francis found the familiar embarrassment creep back. “James, I’m–”

“Oh, none of that,” James interceded. He sounded breathless, exhilarated. “Please, that was–” He swallowed, and even over the poor-quality image of the tightbeam connection, Francis could see the high colour in James’s cheeks. “I would be lying if I said I hadn’t entertained… similar thoughts.”

“You–” Francis found himself stunned. But James’s face was open, and his smile kind. Francis felt something blooming in his chest that was wholly different from the white-hot urgency he’d felt just moments ago. He wanted to pull James close and cradle him in his arms, and he didn’t know what to do with that thought. The instinct was alien to him, and yet it already seemed familiar.

“Francis.” James’s voice was soft, like a lover’s kiss to the cheek. “Take care of yourself.”

The closing of the tightbeam connection felt like a retreat. Francis sagged back in his bunk, then willed himself to get up – he tossed the blanket into the recycler and dug through his closet for a fresh uniform. He scrubbed at his face until he could face himself in the mirror again. When he met his own gaze in the glass, there was a determined look in his eyes that he’d missed the last weeks.

Francis Crozier felt like he could have seized the admiral’s dropship, the protomolecule haunting _Erebus_ and whatever it was keeping their ships trapped here and crushed them in his fist.

“ _Xitim mi to gonya ge, owala_ ,” he said, grinning wildly.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Notes**  
>  Semi-realistic space sex dictates James has a hard time maintaining an erection in zero-g. 
> 
>   
> **Translations**  
>  Xitim mi to gonya ge, ówala. - Now I'm going to get you, fucker.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> As long as something moves, it's still alive, right?

Francis Crozier’s form was life-sized but two dimensional on the projector in _Erebus’s_ wardroom. James thought that out of all the things humans had invented, this was surely the cruellest one—this approximation of being in a room with someone while still being denied the simple comfort of nearness. His subconscious kept urging him to reach out and smooth out a crease in Francis’s uniform that the projector replicated in perfect resolution, but it could not grant him the ability to touch. In a way, it saved James some embarrassment.

Fussing over Francis Crozier. He might have laughed at himself, were the situation not so serious. James might have guessed how it would feel to have the man’s friendship. He had longed for it. He never could have imagined— _this._

They talked most nights now, or whenever their sleep cycles overlapped. Most of the time, there really was only talking—the shared need for comfort, to have someone who understood the burden of command. Other nights—well. James didn’t know if what they had was more than desperate men clinging to something that made them feel alive. He hadn’t worked up the courage to ask.

“Dr Goodsir, what progress have you made on the tests?”

Despite being only a flat picture of himself, Crozier commanded the wardroom of _Erebus_ easily. Edward Little next to him looked a lot more unsettled by the events. Perhaps the near mutiny was still on his mind. Perhaps it was the imminence of _Erebus’s_ fate that kept his mood down.

The infected crew had been deteriorating much more slowly than the doctors had expected. There was so little research on the protomolecule that even their most educated guesses were nothing but that—guesses. Sickbay was strained by an Earther crew unaccustomed to the ailments of a life in zero-g. The burden of care for the infected had fallen on Dr Goodsir, and Dr Goodsir alone, while Dr Stanley tended to the uninfected patients and _Terror’s_ doctors advised where they could.

James’s eyes, as well as everybody else at the table, turned to Harry Goodsir, who took care not to meet any of them. He looked thinner than when they had set out on their journey. His beard had grown longer, though it didn’t make him look unkempt – it put James in the mind of a Greek philosopher, perhaps, or a wizened professor. Still, looking at Goodsir, it was hard to deny they were fast approaching the moment when their desperate attempts at survival became unsustainable. Goodsir, running himself ragged caring for the sick and trying to develop a test, was only the first indicator.

“The test I’ve developed from Collins’s sample passed my latest trials with high reliability and validity. It’s no clinical trial, but I think we’re ready to begin testing, Captain.”

Goodsir was a renowned scientist and yet he never seemed to grow accustomed to receiving attention. When he wasn’t lost in his own mind, he would go off on a tangent about his own research or a paper that he’d read the day before. His first time outside the gravity well had been their time on Luna before the departure, and he’d spent every minute of it collecting specimen, soil samples, whatever data he could get his hands on. James had once retrieved him from a moon walk for a briefing. Needless to say, both of them had been late to the briefing, but James now owned a moon rock that they had sampled from the surface. He wondered where it was. Probably somewhere back with William, with the rest of his earthly possessions. He should have labelled it. His nieces and nephews would love the moon rock, but Will might not recognise it for what it was and decide to throw it away when going through James things… when going through James’s things after his passing.

James swallowed.

Crozier nodded, satisfied. Then his face softened. “And how is Mr. Collins?”

Goodsir looked surprised at that. “He’s–“ He hesitated, his mouth hanging open in contemplation. He looked like he was choosing the true answer over the easy one. “I think he’s frightened, Sir. Much of the crew is.”

James had paid a visit to the infected members of the crew some days ago. Collins’s quarters had been nearly impassable. Collins’s eyes, when James got to his bedside, had been milky-white, with flecks of black matter dancing in them. Goodsir told James that the next stage was a crystal-like growth emerging from all orifices, choking a man slowly and painfully. Goodsir had assured Collins that he would of course receive adequate end-of-life care.

Crozier nodded; lips pressed together in consideration. “Begin the testing as soon as you can implement it safely, Dr Goodsir. If you need any help, I’m sure Captain Fitzjames will see to it that it is provided for you.”

James still startled at being referred to as _captain_ , though he had been in command of _Erebus_ for over a month. If there was anything to command, maybe it would feel more like a real position, and less like an ill-fitting coat he had stolen from his adoptive father’s closet.

“I would appreciate another helping hand, Sir,” Goodsir said.

“An idea,” James said, speaking up for the first time during this meeting. Francis’s eyes fixed on him and James dropped his pen. It spun gently away from his fingers until he recaptured it. “I would suggest John Bridgens, if there are no objections from his side. I don’t find myself much in need of a personal assistant these days.”

That drew a laugh from Crozier, a short-barked _heh_. “You ask him, James, and if he agrees, Mr. Bridgens can help Dr Goodsir.”

James could barely look at him, he realised. He so longed for someone to lean on, someone who understood. If only he could stop falling headfirst into things. It was a bad idea – James, and Francis, and James’s unhealthy fascination with the Belt. He was no better than his father.

“Now, I believe Lieutenant Irving owes us a report on the status of the shuttle. If you would, John?” Crozier ceded the stage to Irving. The lieutenant cleared his throat. “Yes. We are still firing the railgun to deter the shuttle. It is pursuing us, but it is shedding speed. We’re taking that as a good sign.”

The ghost-like form of his hologram cast a glance at navigator Blanky next to him. “About the battery…”

Thomas Blanky took over seamlessly. “I know we tend to forget it while under thrust, but railgun’s pretty much nothing more than a fancy term for a giant slug-thrower. And whatever we throw, we get pushed in the opposite direction with the same force.”

James caught Francis rolling his eyes and blinking out of the picture for a second.

“Ow! I’m getting to the point, Frank, I swear.”

When Francis re-emerged, he was grinning ever-so-slightly.

“To keep on a matching course with _Erebus_ and towards RG1256, we’ve had to use battery power for course corrections.” Blanky paused, looking down at the table and his folded hands. “That unfortunately means we’ve passed the point of no return on _Terror_ yesterday.”

The words were heavy and cold, settling in James’s body like liquid nitrogen. There was a collective intake of breath around the table. Thomas Blanky shook his head. “I swear, it’s like the bastard knows our weaknesses, and is just waiting for us to run out of steam.”

Quite literally, in their case. Without fusion, superheated steam was all the propellant mass that they had. James would have laughed at the irony – to come so far and still be stuck with a steam engine.

Goodsir spoke up. “Sir, might I ask – what does that mean for the future of our mission? Will we not be abandoning _Erebus_ after all?”

Crozier pinched the bridge of his nose. “Captain Fitzjames and me have yet to discuss this.”

If only they could get the reactors online. James found himself thinking of the engine room often these days. The cold fusion torch seemed to him like the heart of _Erebus_ that had stopped beating. A metaphor. A portent. James knew what the safest way to dealing with the protomolecule was—it was to toss anything that had been infected by it into the drive plume of a ship, the path of a nuclear missile, or—in the absence of both—into the sun. James didn’t want to imagine a future where he would sentence good people on _Erebus_ to that fate.

Especially when the rest of them didn’t have a much better chance at survival.

“Lieutenant Le Vesconte, I’ve been made aware that you are somewhat of an expert on exoplanets. Would you be able to brief us on what we can expect if we find ourselves having to make a landing on RG1256?”

At the request of Captain Crozier, Henry laid out what they knew about RG1256, or Lamos, whatever the crew wanted to call it. James knew most of it already—he and Henry had spent enough time going over the data together in the early days of their mission. The probes had begun to send back data as well. It still left a great many things up in the air.

Francis listened intently, but James was watching Francis: He did his best to appear steadfast, captainly, but with most eyes on Henry, he permitted himself to let some of the exhaustion show on his face. James so wished to smooth away the worry lines. He remained seated when Francis finished the briefing, sparing a nod for Henry as he left the room. Erebus’s wardroom wasn’t what it had once been. Goodsir lingered for a moment longer, but James shook his head gently. “Later. I have business to discuss with Captain Crozier.”

The surgeon nodded and left. James turned to Francis.

_Terror’s_ wardroom was probably as empty now as _Erebus’s_. It made the distance between them seem a strange and constructed thing – just the two of them in this wide, vacant room. James realised he was nervous.

“About _Terror’s_ battery–” James said at the same time Francis said: “With Goodsir ready to implement testing–”

James smiled, as did Francis. Some of the tension melted away. Francis extended his hand. “Please, James.”

The way he said his name made James’s heart flutter in a way that had nothing to do with the disorientation of being on the float. It was the remembered heat of the way Francis said his name at the height of his passion, with his face so afraid and yet so open. It was the knowledge of how Francis said his name afterwards.

“Henry’s briefing. You mean to go down to the surface,” James said. Francis only nodded. “It’s the closest refuge we have. We have stores that could establish a colony, if a rudimentary one. I know it’s a gamble to assume we can begin farming but–”

“I agree,” James set, cutting off what seemed to be a long speech Francis had prepared to convince James of the veracity of his proposal. “It’s risky, but it’s our best option. And it’s where they’ll come looking for survivors.”

“Not for a year or two,” Francis said softly, “We have to survive for that long.”

“And _Erebus_?” James asked. If Francis would speak the words James had been thinking, James wouldn’t have to hate himself for thinking them.

Francis closed his eyes, brow furrowed. He looked like he was in pain – actual physical pain, the kind that went to the bone. “As long as one sailor on _Erebus_ is still in command of their faculties, we can make sure that the protomolecule doesn’t use it as an escape vector towards Sol.”

James found himself holding his breath. Francis pinched the bridge of his nose angrily. “Oh, you know the best solution, James. You may think me heartless for suggesting it, but you know this creature will erase all life in Sol if we let it back through the ring.”

James reached out for Francis’s arm and found his hand passing through it before he remembered there were hundreds of kilometres between them. He drew his hands back into his lap, useless things that they were. “I do not think you heartless, Francis. I simply wished – well, I wished to hear you say it, because I did not want to be the only one thinking it.”

“We are condemning living men to their deaths,” Francis said, “I cannot do this and still say I have their best interest at heart.” He exhaled shakily. “Were I a true captain, I would find a way to save them.”

James kneaded his hands over and over, trying to satisfy his terrible need to reach out. If he could touch Francis but once–

“James,” Francis said suddenly, his voice filled with urgency, “With Goodsir ready for testing, I need you to promise me something.”

“Anything,” James said, rather too quickly. A sordid smile curled Francis’s lips. “Don’t be so quick to promise. You may yet call me heartless.”

James simply kept his eyes fixed on Francis’s, hoping to bare his soul over the tightbeam connection. He wasn’t brave enough to speak the depth of his emotion, but Francis might glimpse the truth in his eyes, anyway.

“You cannot tell me your result, James.” Francis breathed, and his shoulders heaved with it. “If I have to make this decision, I have to make it without knowing what it means for you.”

“Francis, you know I would never—I won’t put anyone in danger. If I’m infected, I will gladly stay behind if that means other men might live.”

Francis shook his head. “I never doubted that. But I—I will have to be impartial. And if I know you’re going to stay behind–” The truth was written plainly on his face. _I don’t know if I could give the order._ James swallowed. Francis closed his eyes. “And I don’t want to wonder, for the rest of my life, if I could only make myself give the order because I knew it wouldn’t affect you.”

Francis was preparing himself for a truth that James had already considered, in his darker hours. _I was there, Francis. I helped Goodsir when Morfin collapsed. I had direct contact with an infected crew member._ It wouldn’t do to dwell on it. They didn’t know how the protomolecule chose its hosts and dwelling on it would only keep James from doing his duties.

“Francis,” James said, “Of course. But I know you. And I know you will make the right decision, because you are a good man, and a capable captain.”

James waited, patiently, until Francis met his eyes again. Francis rubbed at his eyes, then drew in a sharp breath. “Thank you,” he whispered hoarsely.

Had they been together, James would have reached out with a tentative hand, one that sat perhaps a little closer than entirely proper. As things stood, he found himself having to be less subtle in his advances.

“Would you call me later, once you’re off duty? I… missed you.”

Francis blinked rapidly, and suddenly the red of his eyes had to contend with the reddening of his cheeks. “I—yes. With pleasure.”

James smiled. Francis did, too. It was a small thing, but it was what they had. James did his best not to think of a future where it might ruin them.

\--

Lieutenant Irving was not on duty when the shuttle made another pass at Terror, which was why he felt the whole thing was his mistake.

He and Hodgson had worked out a schedule together with Lieutenant Le Vesconte on _Erebus_ , so that there was always at least one trained gunnery officer present on the bridge at all times. It wasn’t Hodgson’s fault that it happened five hours into his shift, or that he didn’t draw the right conclusions until it was too late. Still, Irving felt he could have prevented the worst had he only been there from the beginning.

Captain Crozier had put Irving in charge of monitoring the shuttle’s activities—first because he’d actually been there when the protomolecule had taken over Erebus’s shuttle and therefore knew how fast it could react, and then because habit superseded the chain of command and Lieutenant Le Vesconte was probably happier playing with his exoplanets than with data from the shuttle trajectory, which had become Irving’s favourite pastime in the last months. Because Irving was nominally in control of this operation, he was informed almost immediately after the initial incident. He made his way up from his quarters to the bridge in record time.

Hodgson was strapped into the main gunner’s seat when Irving got to the bridge. There had been no manoeuvre alert, which meant Hodgson hadn’t fired the railgun yet. Irving took the couch next to him.

“The shuttle began accelerating towards Terror an hour ago,” Hodsgon explained, “I would have fired, but Mr. Blanky told us to be careful with the batteries and, well–” He pointed at the screen. “The projection said it was going to miss.”

Irving should have said something then. Hodgson knew how fast the protomolecule could change the course of an object. Inertia meant nothing—or at least very little—to it. His mistake in that moment was understanding the calculation that head lead Hodgson to make that decision.

“It did miss, didn’t it?”

It had to have missed. A collision with an object of the dropship’s size at the speed they were going meant instant obliteration.

“Yes!” Hodgson said quickly. Irving could see it himself, if not with the naked eye on the viewscreen then on the tactical map. The shuttle had seemed to throw itself at _Terror_ like it had done so many times over the past months and then—missed. “Only…”

He pulled up a second tactical map, this one with a projected course that showed the shuttle gently curving back towards _Terror_ and _Erebus_. “Huh,” Irving said, “Well this is interesting.”

He couldn’t make sense of it. Why would the shuttle miss—on purpose, Irving couldn’t believe that after months of relentless pursuit it would miss by accident—and then make a pass at them from the other— _oh_.

“George, get me Lieutenant Le Vesconte on a connection _right now_ ,” he said calmly, trying to mask the dread that had crept into his throat. He found himself praying that he was wrong, even as his mind told him that he was right.

“But he’s asleep!” Hodgson said, then caught the look on Irving’s face and decided it was better to do as asked. Irving watched the curving path of the shuttle and measured it against the minutes it would take Le Vesconte to get up on the bridge.

“Please tell me there’s an actual gunner on _Erebus’s_ bridge. Anyone,” Irving said. Someone else responded over the tightbeam. “You need a gunner? Why didn’t you say so to begin with?”

“Captain Fitzjames!” Irving was so stunned; he momentarily forgot the inbound shuttle. “I—didn’t know you were a trained gunner.”

The connection was voice-only, all their screens occupied by the tactical displays, but Irving could imagine the captain grinning like he had so many times recounting his stories over a wardroom dinner. “What, did you think I talked Martians to death during the war?” He laughed, although briefly. “What’s do you want me to shoot?”

“The shuttle is going to hit _Terror_ again, but it’s making an approach that will place _Erebus_ in the path of our railgun. I’m sending you the tactical data right now.”

“I have it,” the captain confirmed. “Oh, I see,” he said then. “Let me just–”

Irving’s screen flickered and then he saw a copy of Fitzjames’s terminal, calculations rapidly spooling down. Irving split his attention between Fitzjames’s math and the tactical map of the approaching shuttle.

“Got it,” Fitzjames said, “There’s your firing solution.”

There was a strange moment where Irving realised that Fitzjames was waiting for his input of all people. “Ah.” He didn’t want to say _permission to fire_. “That looks good to me, captain.”

“I’ve been wanting to do this for ages,” Fitzjames said, and then the railgun on _Erebus_ came alive for the first time during their entire voyage. Irving watched with bated breath as the slug approached the shuttle at a breath-taking speed that still meant nothing in the vastness of space—and then collide, knocking it off its collision course with _Terror_.

Fitzjames whooped. “Oh, that was beautifully done.”

“Indeed, Sir.” Irving watched the shuttle spin away with no small amount of satisfaction. It had gotten closer to _Terror_ than he would have liked, but a slug from the railgun was usually enough to deter it for a while—maybe it had to repair damages sustained, or it simply waited until they were off their guard again; Irving wouldn’t speculate.

“Sir,” Hodgson said suddenly, “It wasn’t aiming for _Terror_.”

Like the kind of optical illusion that was really two pictures at once, Irving saw the tactical map change shape before his very eyes. The blow from _Erebus’s_ railgun had indeed knocked the shuttle off his collision course with _Terror_ —and on a path that saw _Erebus_ between it and _Terror_ , leaving _Erebus_ defenceless.

“Captain,” Irving said, but Fitzjames was already typing. “I see it, I see it.”

“You don’t have time,” Irving said, “Your railgun is still recharging. You need to take evasive action now. I can hit it from _Terror_ if you get out of my way.”

“Oh, damn it all to hell,” Fitzjames swore, then cut the connection to switch channels. He had to inform the crew of _Erebus_ of the upcoming high-g manoeuvre. “Heat up our gun, George,” Irving ordered, then waited for Fitzjames to come back on.

“Mr. Reid, we’re ready for evasive manoeuvres.” When Fitzjames’s voice returned, there was none of the levity from earlier left. Irving knew how he felt—the surety that this must be punishment for letting their guards down for even a second. At least _Erebus_ had battery power to spare for the manoeuvre.

“We’re ready on _Terror_ , Sir.”

Fitzjames went quiet as _Erebus_ bucked and spun out of the path of the shuttle. Irving fired the railgun as soon as the path was clear. The shuttle was close enough that Hodgson could chase it with a round of PDCs, which were reserved for close-quarter combat, and that sent the shuttle on a merry new trajectory from which it would not return so fast.

Irving thought of ghosts, then, and whether anything of the Admiral or the other people on the shuttle remained conscious within the network of the protomolecule. He’d heard terrible stories from Eros. He hoped that if they felt anything, they would understand.

Irving sent a new tightbeam request to _Erebus_. Fitzjames’s connection had cut out during the brief time they had been under thrust. There was no response.

Irving sent the request again, this time not to Fitzjames’s gunnery station but the captain’s station. Again, there was no response. Irving tried a third time, and that did the trick—but it was not Fitzjames who responded to the hail.

“I’m sorry, Lieutenant Irving,” navigator Reid said. Image transmission had been reactivated and under the lights of the bridge, the navigator looked pale from the momentary press of high gravity on his body. “I had to call for medical assistance.”

He paused, swallowed. His face had the vacant expression of shock, and Irving felt himself go cold. “It’s Captain Fitzjames, SIr. He’s collapsed.”


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nobody's happy with the situation, but everybody deals with it differently.

Francis was drinking. Such a course of action was a bad way to react to a worse situation, but having embarked on this trajectory of poor choices he now felt that changing his habits or the situation would require a lot of work.

He’d been foolish, he realised. Foolish in thinking he had time. Selfish in thinking James might be spared the fate of so many others on _Erebus_ —simply because Francis had grown attached to him.

_Attached_. Even in thinking Francis couldn’t be honest with himself. James Fitzjames—a man who never took no for an answer—had somehow wormed his way into the sad remnants of Francis’s heart. _An Earther_. Francis would have laughed at himself if the realisation hadn’t come at the worst possible time.

Irving had informed Francis immediately after the captain collapsed. Francis had already been waiting for a call after the high-g manoeuvre alert—but nothing had prepared him for Irving’s pale face, nor the news he brought. _Captain Fitzjames collapsed on the bridge_. Francis had to assume the worst. The fact that he remained standing at all bordered on a miracle. Somehow, he’d made it through the rest of his shift and back to his quarters, where the way Jopson hovered led Francis to suspect that Jopson knew about Fitzjames and him. But even Jopson couldn’t come up with a pretence to stay for much longer than the end of his shift, and he’d left Francis to his whiskey and darkening mood with a look of regret. When Edward came by not ten minutes later, Francis sent him away with an order to tell Jopson to stop worrying.

He was _fine_. Like a game of card- _imbobo_ , he was fine so long as no one went poking about.

The whiskey soothed the worst of the sting, but it also made him morose. Instead of a sharp and painful breakdown, it drew out his suffering into a long, nebulous episode. He shouldn’t be drinking, not with half their command already incapacitated, and yet he couldn’t stop, because he was afraid of facing the situation sober. He couldn’t recall a time when he’d been so afraid of anything.

It took Blanky until Francis reached his third bulb to show up. Francis would have expected him by the second at the latest.

“Are you done killing yourself yet?” He drawled when the door slid open. He’d never taken Francis’s dramatics as seriously as Jopson or Edward.

“Are you going to tell me that I need to get my _felota_ together?” Francis raised an eyebrow. Blanky crossed his arms. “Actually, I was gonna ask you if you could spare a drink.”

Francis wanted to tell him to lay off acting like nothing had happened. It was only marginally better than Jopson’s fussing. The unimaginable had happened. That didn’t mean Francis wouldn’t talk about it, because that would make it real.

“Alright, get it over with, then.”

He passed Thomas a bulb, then knocked back more than half of his own. Thomas settled in next to him, unimpressed by Francis’s callous manner.

The whiskey burned pleasantly. Francis had never been so grateful that it wasn’t good whiskey—were that the case, he might have experienced something akin to remorse at drowning himself in the stuff. Like this, his stores were just appropriate for the situation.

Thomas chuckled. “Remember when you were complaining about his math?”

Francis winced. Having been the victim of snap judgements all his life, the reminder of how quickly he’d dismissed James based on his youth and seeming inexperience hurt. Francis kept his eyes fixed on his bulb of whiskey, shining in golden liquid amber. He couldn’t look at Thomas. Francis would ignore him, that was the best course of action. Blanky just needed to feel like he’d said his piece and then he’d leave Francis to contemplate the steaming pile of shit he’d made of everything. Growing attached to his second. Growing attached to James fucking Fitzjames.

He couldn’t do it without James. He’d had the right of it when he’d asked James not to tell him his test results. _Sabaka_. He should have known better.

“Well, I’m not one to hold a man’s change of heart against him,” Thomas said, which was blatantly untrue, “Suppose I should be glad you two worked it out.”

“I made a mistake, Tom,” Francis said, voice thick and his tongue heavy from the whiskey. Thomas’s expression softened immediately. He clasped one hand to Francis’s arm, reassuring and firm. Francis struggled with the words all scrambling to force their way out of his mouth. “I – James–” He shook his head at his own uselessness. Francis had forgotten that the Black only taught lessons in experiences. Pain as the better teacher. And Francis with a new scar on his heart.

“We don’t even know what happened to him,” Thomas said quietly, “Don’t lose all hope just yet, hm?”

“I—we—” Francis was still trying to give shape to the thing between himself and James. “You’re right,” he said, shoulders sagging, “We don’t even know.”

But in his heart, he knew. He knew because every good thing Francis Crozier had ever set his heart on had been taken from him sooner or later.

Thomas squeezed his arm sympathetically. Francis compelled himself to meet his eye. “I should have expected something like this.”

“Forgotten arm,” Thomas said, sympathy in his voice but a twinkle in his eyes, “Ke?”

Francis’s shoulders sagged. _The blow you don’t see coming_. “Forgotten arm,” he mumbled.

He had let himself grow complacent thinking that the people he loved would be safe the closer he gathered them to his heart—that he could save the crew, and James, simply through the force of his conviction. But the Black didn’t care for Francis’s stubborn nature, or the flame of hope in his chest. It rewarded actions, not intentions.

Francis drew himself up. He would have liked to stand, or float, but the lack of gravity didn’t mix well with inebriation. “We have to begin preparations tomorrow. _Erebus_ has to be evacuated as soon as Goodsir can finish testing. They will have to bring as many provisions from Erebus as they can spare, and all the soil samples we have. Any of Goodsir’s specimen that he can bear to part with.”

He thought of Eros, and the Belter futures that had been cut short for them to make it all the way here, to the end of Earth’s foolishly ambitious search for resources. Francis—twenty years removed from the physical reminders of what Earth ambition felt like for those at the bottom of the ladder—had grown complacent. He had forgotten. But the man who had spent two years training himself to endure full Earth gravity out of spite was still in there somewhere. There was very little that could hurt that man.

“We’ll need it all.”

\--

It took ten minutes to assemble the crew. A third had been dragged out of the middle of their sleep cycle and looked the part. The hangover was threatening to split Francis’s skull. He was not looking to resuming the bone density drugs treatments with MacDonald later. But it had to be done. It all had to be done, even if Francis couldn’t remember what for.

First shift had been detailed to fold up the tables and create standing room for the crew. When Francis’s head count came up full, and Edward informed him that the whole crew was present, Francis stepped in front of the men.

He had a thought, then, short and horrible: the protomolecule might strike now. He saw it as clearly as though it was actually happening, the blue growths spurting forth from the eyes and nose and mouth from the assembled sailors on deck; blue, bioluminescent webbing like fungal growth covering the deck. The groans and screams of Eros come to haunt him. He pulled himself out of it.

“I have news for you that I’m afraid you’re not going to like.” A murmur went through the crowd. “Shortly after we passed through the ring gate, we discovered that _Erebus_ was infected with the protomolecule. The ship was appropriately quarantined, and measures were taken to ensure the infection would not spread among the crew.”

Francis watched the faces of his crew. Some he knew better than others, but all of them were people like him—sailors who understood the dangers of the Black and still chose to come out here, for love or for glory or simply for something more than a life on Basic. He felt a camaraderie with them, then, like he could have been any of them, could have been all of them.

“We all know the dangers of the protomolecule. We have been threatened by it before. Earthers. Martians.” He pointed to Thomas Blanky at his side, proof that their differences were not insurmountable. “Belters.” He struck his own chest with a closed fist. “We know it is a weapon far outside our realm of understanding. But we’ve fought it before, and we will do so again.”

The ranks were moving now. Francis could see them turning towards each other, whispering to each other with voices that were equal parts fear and wonder. _Did you hear him? Is this real? Is this happening?_

“The surgeons on the ship are doing everything they can to see if the infection is spreading. I did not keep this from you out of fear—” The voices increased in volume for a second, and Francis raised his voice in turn. “—I did not keep this from you out of fear, but out of a concern for your safety. This knowledge is a burden, and I will not pretend otherwise. With it comes the obligation to not let it distract you from your duty. To go forward without fear, and to trust in your fellow crew members, your captain, and what the next day may bring you.”

Solemn nods all around.

“We will prepare to make a landing on RG1256. We still do not know what incapacitated our drives, but until we know for sure that no ship is carrying protomolecule, we will not be returning to Sol. That is the price we must pay to keep our families safe.”

He had them. He could tell he had them. Francis Crozier, despised by Earthers and Belters alike, had managed this one thing in life—he had the support of a crew.

“You did shoot the Admiral, though.”

Cornelius Hickey wandered out of the shadow at the back of the crowd like they had just given birth to him. Francis watched, struck speechless by the cheek of the entrance and the idea that now, of all times—

“That’s a nice speech and all, but you did shoot him.”

Blast him to hell. Give him over to the Black and let the vacuum boil his body alive. Throw him into the drive plume of a ship, let the radiation and the heat reduce him to atoms, didn’t he see that Francis was trying to _save people_ —

“Mr. Hickey,” Francis said dryly. “Perhaps you’d like to enlighten us as to what you saw on the bridge that day.”

“Oh, I’m just a lowly technician, Sir. I don’t pretend to understand much of what I saw. But I know you dragged Lieutenant Irving over there out of his seat so that you could fire _Terror’s_ railgun at the Admiral’s shuttle.”

The murmur that rose up among the crowd now was louder than before. Francis realised that had been the ace up Hickey’s sleeve all along.

Francis turned left, then right, signalling Irving and Hodgson to the back of the crowd. They went with barely a nod in his direction. Edward he kept by his side, Blanky on stage left, in case things went very badly. Out of all of them, Thomas probably had the most versatile combat experience, because the Martian Navy did not mess around with its training. He could even beat Francis in a round of zero-g jiu-jitsu, and that sport had been invented in Francis’s dojo on Ceres.

“Everything I’ve done, I’ve done in the name of the survival of this crew,” Francis said, spreading his arms. “ _Erebus’s_ shuttle carried protomolecule in its active stage. It had consumed Admiral Franklin, Lieutenant Gore, and Sergeant Bryant.”

“That’s what you say,” Hickey challenged, “But it’s no secret that you never liked the Admiral. What’s next, are you going to shoot _Erebus_ out of the sky? Shoot me?”

Tozer. Hickey’s buddy Tozer, one of the UN marines, had a gun. Francis’s eyes snapped left, then right, but couldn’t spot the man. Why had he not dealt with this immediately when it came up? Francis felt the itch at the back of his neck that made him want to turn around. He was expecting a slug to the back any second. He couldn’t let it show.

“I grew up on Ceres,” Francis said, switching gears on impulse, “I know many of you joined the Navy because the alternative was a meaningless life on Basic. You all wanted to make something more of your lives than that. But on Ceres, there is no Basic. There’s no safety net. Some people are born, and they die without ever seeing their name on a government or private register. It’s a place with few laws, and fewer people to enforce them.”

Francis paused. He saw a few frowning faces in the crowd, wondering where he was going with this. He’d lost track of Hickey but was sure the man would resurface when the time came.

“There is only one law, where I grew up. _Im na gut fo go solo ere da belék_.” He let the words ring out, knowing all but a few wouldn’t understand him. Hickey was building his case on Francis’s dishonesty, so Francis would be honest. About everything. “It’s not good to go alone in the black. Alone, you die.”

He let the sound of _Lang Belta_ colour his English words. He had been born here, in the Back, in the place that wanted to kill you in ways you couldn’t even imagine. Let them remember that and hate him for it later, so long as they remembered now that he was their best guarantee of survival.

“Everything I’ve done, I’ve done in the name of the survival of this crew,” Francis repeated, “Ask yourselves what Mr. Hickey’s motivations are.”

There was a commotion at the back of the crowd, suddenly. An argument between sailors, Francis thought, before he heard a shout— “ _Hey!”—_ Irving’s voice, but Francis couldn’t see him. All he saw from his vantage point at the front of the crowd was people moving. There was the sound of the scuffle. Two of the marines were pushing people aside trying to get to it. “What the _fuck_ —”

Irving, again, and then Hodgson’s voice. “I’ve got him!”

Francis pushed through the crowd, Edward at his side keeping the crew at bay. Violence hung in the air like a thick fog, a moment on a knife’s edge. The crowd cleared. Hodgson was kneeling on the still-grinning Mr Hickey, whose arms he had twisted on his back. A bloody screwdriver rolled away. And on the ground—

_“Get MacDonald!”_

Bleeding in zero-g always looked fine until it was too late. The blood that had accumulated around Irving’s midsection looked bad already.

“I’m here.”

MacDonald emerged from between two sailors. He kneeled down next to Irving, his hands moving calmly and methodically to stop the bleeding and stabilize Irving. The marines took Hickey from Hodgson, who righted himself shakily, then stumbled over to Irving before Edward caught him. Francis picked up the screwdriver.

“Edward, show Mr. Hickey to his quarters please.”

Francis did his best to keep his voice level. Edward pressed a warning hand to Hodgson’s chest. Hodgson nodded, once. There was a flash in Hickey’s eyes as Edward took his arm and began to steer him away. Francis thought of airlocks again, and of the simplicity of Belter justice. This was messier. Then again, _Terror’s_ airlocks weren’t going anywhere. And neither was Mr. Hickey.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you want to see Jared Harris being extremely sexy while yelling in Belter Creole, might I direct you to [this video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s5ZjTGdSCrY).
> 
> **Translations**  
>  imbobo - house  
> felota - floating object, mild expletive  
> sabaka - literally means 'bitch' but can also be an expression of (negative) surprise


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Time to measure up.

“Dr Stanley tells me I was very lucky.”

The image of James over the grainy feed was familiar, but his surroundings were not—the medical crash couches were slightly larger, slightly more elaborate than the crew standard, and just off camera were countless status lights that illuminated James’s face in a way that differed from the lighting in his quarters. His face itself looked strange as well—Francis knew it was the slight drooping of his mouth that hadn’t yet worn off. Still, he couldn’t help but feel that James was perpetually sneering at him.

Being able to talk to James at all made his heart beat faster.

“Apparently it was the lack of exercise, combined with me overworking myself. A high-g evasive manoeuvre under such conditions has killed people before.”

A stroke. Francis could have strangled the man if he was somewhere Francis could reach him. As things stood, he had to glower at James over the tightbeam and pretend that he wasn’t relieved beyond measure that James was not dead or dying. Not yet, at least.

It was odd—this didn’t differ much from the way they had spent many nights over the past months, except there was a heavy weight in Francis’s throat where he was sure he had to say something but couldn’t figure out the right way to go about it. Another part of him wanted to shove that thought deep down to where it wouldn’t see the light of day again until James was safely aboard _Terror_.

“You could have died, James,” Francis said. He hoped James couldn’t see his red-rimmed eyes over the grainy video feed.

“I think—" James said laboriously, shaping the letters with a mouth that wasn’t fully back under his control yet, “—that there are quite enough famous James’s in the UN Navy for my death not to make a difference.”

Francis should know. He knew one of them personally, after all. “Nonsense,” Francis said, “Don’t even say that. It’s not funny.”

James laughed despite Francis’s protestations. “I think it’s extremely funny. My name was never meant to set me apart. My father couldn’t know in what esteemed company I’d find myself, but I think he’d be pleased I’m not even the only James there.”

Francis couldn’t help but catalogue it minutely the slurring of James’s speech, the twitch of muscles on the lame side of his face. He’d thought he’d lost James, and then James had been granted an extension on life. Francis knew with a deep-seated conviction that the next time he’d have to let go of James, it would be unbearable.

“You know, my father—" Speaking hurt James. He swallowed around the words, his brow furrowed, and Francis wished desperately he could reach out and touch him. He wanted to give him some, any kind of comfort. “My father represented a UN Navy subcontractor on Titan. He was—by all accounts, he wasn’t the most studious, nor the most committed to his job, but the UN didn’t care because Titan was a long way off.”

James spoke slowly, haltingly. Francis wanted to tell him to rest, but when he opened his mouth, James raised a hand to stop him. “Please, Francis. I owe you this much.”

“You don’t owe me anything, James,” Francis said intently. James smiled, and it almost reached both sides of his face.

“He was married, but his wife chose to stay behind when he went to Titan. My mother—" James’s eyes flickered to the camera, like seeking reassurance from Francis. “My mother worked at the resort. I never met her. It’s possible—it’s possible she was an Earther, but it’s more likely that she was a Belter.”

Francis drew a sharp breath. It felt like his world narrowed down to nothing but James on the small screen, who looked at the camera again, now apologetic. The words echoed in his mind. “He paid for her trip to Ganymede. He paid for the best growth juice money could buy, and when the doctors assured him it wouldn’t kill me, he took me back to Earth where he handed me off to friends of the family. Maybe he wanted to see if it could be done, or he couldn’t stand the thought of being related to a Belter.” James paused long enough to take a laborious breath that shook his entire body. “I joined the Navy because I didn’t want to spend a life on Basic, but also because I hoped—"

James stopped talking. He rubbed at his eyes furiously. He was crying, Francis realised, shaking with silent sobs he still wanted to hide from Francis. Christ but Francis would pull this man into his arms if he could. He would hold him and not let go until all the things that the world had broken in James Fitzjames were made whole again. His hands curled into fists in his lap at the impotence of it and he cursed the _pashang_ protomolecule and the _felota_ distance between their ships and the _kaka_ fact he couldn’t yet be sure that James wouldn’t be taken from him.

“It doesn’t matter now. It was all so long ago. There was a war. My mother might have died long before I ever got out into the Black.”

“James…” Francis said, breathless.

“I lied to you, Francis. I lied to everyone. I’m the most despicable kind of person. I laughed about the jokes about Belters, all while I was—"

Francis would have laughed, or he might have cried. “Why didn’t you say something?”

James closed his eyes, swallowed. “Reputation,” he said quietly. “But I… wanted you to know.”

It closed itself warm like a fist around Francis’s throat. He almost asked if Goodsir had already tested James for the protomolecule—but he stopped himself at the last moment.

“We can find her,” Francis said instead, “If you want to. I’ll go to Titan with you.”

It was a stupid idea, voiced in the desperation of the moment. Who had said they would make it out of here, much less that James would want to go anywhere with him if they did? But Francis couldn’t help the small voice of his heart, the way it sang. _He’s like you. He’s just like you._

“They don’t like you,” James mumbled. “Don’t have to… on my account.”

Did James not realise Francis would give him all of bloody Titan if he asked for it?

“I don’t care.”

James laughed, and it pained Francis how much it shook him. James looked so weak that it seemed only the belts of the crash couch were holding him together—he’d run himself ragged over the last months. And Francis had let him. “You’re lucky I appreciate your single-mindedness,” James said.

Francis grinned, despite himself. He felt wild and foolish, like he might do something rash only because of James, and what he had told him. “You love it, _setara mali_.”

James frowned. “What does that mean?” He demanded. “Francis, what did you call me?”

“I called you insufferable,” Francis said, “Because you’ll put me in an early grave worrying over you.”

James crossed his arms in front of his chest, a childishly petulant gesture. It only broadened Francis’s grin.

“I’ll tell you when you come to _Terror_.” Francis’s voice softened. Instead of telling James what he wanted to say, this would have to do. “That way you have a reason to be more careful.”

* * *

Francis had asked Jopson to clean his best uniform and dress him for the occasion. He hadn’t worn the thing in months, since before their stop at Medina, and it sat ill on him—a little too tight in some places, too lose in others, it was plain that Francis had lost muscle mass since crossing through the ring. Still, he wore it. It was a small thing, of no use to the men that were staying behind on _Erebus_ , and yet Francis felt he owed it to them. A sign of respect. The last thing he could do for them.

He’d assembled the full bridge crew, all of them in full dress uniform as well. The mood on the bridge was sombre. Edward Little looked close to tears and had aged a full ten years in the last days as testing ramped up. Francis had asked for names, every name except one. Each one had pained him in a special way. He had felt every loss.

On the tactical screen, three dots— _Erebus’s_ remaining shuttles—were making their way over to _Terror_. They were loaded full with supplies and the remaining crew; making for a tight, uncomfortable ninety-minute journey. One man not among them was Dr Goodsir.

Francis had called him privately a couple of hours ago, to thank the surgeon. Goodsir had seemed strangely content.

“Out of all the ways to die out here, I think I have picked the most formidable one, captain. Imagine—the structures we’ve seen the protomolecule build! The pure symmetry! It’s terrifying, but only in the way we don’t understand it. The way a tiger is terrifying.”

Francis hadn’t known what to say to that. He couldn’t see any beauty in death.

But it was over, for now. After they piled _Terror_ full of the remaining crew from _Erebus_ , all they had to do was flip the ship and brake towards RG1256. They’d take the seven shuttles down to the surface, piled high with all the supplies they could fit, and then take the next challenge when it met them.

Thomas stood at Francis’s right side, Edward on his left. Francis was as ready as he’d ever be.

He put through a request for a tightbeam—audio only. His voice would be heard everywhere on _Erebus_ , from the crew quarters of those who were beyond leaving them to the bridge, where the infected but asymptomatic crew were piloting the ship to its last destination. It would be strange, letting _Erebus_ go.

“I won’t try to console you,” Francis said when the light on his terminal went green, confirming the connection, “What you are facing is harder than anything I’ve had to do in my life. I won’t know if I will measure up when my time comes, but I know all of you have measured up admirably.”

He’d agonized over the words more than he had over anything in his life. During his childhood, he’d seen death in its many forms every day, but he’d never had to see it from the cold, detached perspective of the bridge of a UNN ship. Fearing he’d become the person he most loathed, he hadn’t slept, until Jopson pulled a final draft away from his shaking hands and threatened to lock him in his quarters and out of his terminal if he didn’t close his eyes.

“I thank every single one of you for the sacrifice you are making, not just for us but for the entire Sol system, and all the systems beyond. I would lie if I said we were acting together to defeat it—we all have the same goal, but the cost you are facing is much higher than what we will have to pay.”

Francis would have given a lot for James by his side right now.

“I can offer you no words of comfort. What you are facing is lonely, and it is terrible. But I will ensure that your names will not be forgotten. We will carry them with us, and I promise you, _we will bring them home_.”

On the tactical screen, he saw that the last shuttle had docked with _Terror_. It was time for the _Erebus_ bridge crew to implement the ship’s new course. The one that would bring it close enough to the system’s sun to burn it up.

Francis dropped his shoulders and rubbed at his eyes. Suddenly, it was a lot to just remain standing, even tethered to the deck by his boots as he was. He signalled Thomas Blanky, then strapped himself into his crash couch.

_Terror_ , the shuttles now docked, would begin braking—the sooner they started, the less gravity they would have to endure on their drop towards RG1256. Blanky sounded the gravity alarm, and then the weight of weightlessness—the falling sensation, the nausea—dropped like it had never been. Francis found himself tethered to the deck at three quarters of a g, feeling the familiar ache return to his bones.

A relieved hum went through the assembled crew—a few clapped, but the mood was still too sombre to really feel the relief.

“Godspeed, _Terror_.”

Francis had left the connection with _Erebus_ open. The voice of Second Lieutenant Henry Le Vesconte was not a surprise to him, but it did hurt. He closed his eyes, knowing he would have to face hundreds of such reminders in the coming weeks and years.

“ _Ya, oso to_ , _Erebus_. Godspeed.”

There was something else in the background of the transmission—a humming sound. Francis checked the signal, but it wasn’t a technical issue—someone was singing, he realised. The terminal told him it was coming from the crew quarters in section two. At first, the voice was too quiet to make out the words, but then another one joined in. After that, another. 

_“Heel y’ho boys,  
let her go boys,  
turn her head round  
into the weather.”_

It was an old shanty. Francis could now recognise the voice of John Morfin, one of the first to be infected, quiet and yet still familiar. One by one, others joined in. _Terror’s_ bridge fell quiet, as though the thing that was squeezing Francis’s throat shut had a hold of them all. Francis caught sight of Edward in his crash couch, his eyes shut tightly and his body shaking. Francis knew the song—there were hundreds upon hundreds of Belter shanties out there, modelled after old Earth songs, and Francis joined in the only way he knew how.

_“Bang y'ho mang_ _,  
tili go, mang.  
Go fongi fonde  
ere da bélek.“_

Others on _Terror’s_ bridge now joined, in English and with voices shaking, until it rang out as clearly on _Terror’s_ bridge as it must on _Erebus_. It felt important in a way Francis couldn’t put into words. The song was shaking his chest, and then he realised he was crying, same as Edward. He turned to Blanky. The hardened Martian had tears in his eyes, even as his voice rang out, loud and booming.

_“Heel y'ho boys,  
let her go boys.  
Sailing homeward  
to Mingualay.”_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Translations**  
>  pashang - fucking  
> felota - floating object, mild expletive  
> kaka - shit  
> setara mali - darling, literally 'little star'  
> ya, oso to - and to you
> 
> Bang y'ho mang,  
> tili go, mang.  
> Go fongi fonde  
> ere da bélek.
> 
> _Steer her round, man,  
>  I often go, man,  
> leave,  
> out in the black._
> 
> **Notes**  
>  If you're looking to have a good cry along with this, you can listen to Port Isaac's Fisherman's Friends do the [Mingulay Boat Song](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rM4tkzf8_NM).


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They move on, because they must.

Francis stepped into the hangar; hands clasped behind his back. The remaining _Erebus_ crew and the _Terror_ crew on shift were already busy unloading the shuttles, dragging crates of supplies to mechs that would carry them to storage. MacDonald was tending to the survivors, no doubt thinking of the Belter idiom that trust was good, but double checking was better. Francis nodded at him approvingly when he passed the surgeon, and MacDonald nodded back.

Francis was relieved at every familiar face he saw, but he noted the faces that were missing even more. Thirty-five infected. Thirty-five lost to the protomolecule. More than half of the crew on _Erebus_. And if they had made even one mistake, it would be all of them soon enough.

The shuttles were emptying rapidly. Lieutenant Hodgson was overseeing the shut-down procedure—they’d need the shuttles again to get the hundred crew that were left down to the surface of RG1256. The more sailors passed Francis, the more nauseous he felt—he hadn’t seen James yet. Even though he had braced himself for it, the blow still hit hard and heavy, like eight-g of an emergency braking manoeuvre to the chest.

He couldn’t afford to give in to despair. Fortifying himself, he went to speak to Hodgson, who assured him they would run a full decontamination on all three shuttles before the end of the shift. A preliminary scan had revealed no traces of protomolecule on any of the shuttles. Still, they hadn’t survived so long by being careless.

A hand on his shoulder made Francis turn around. He was half expecting it to be MacDonald, briefing him on the state of the crew they had been able to rescue from _Erebus_. But that was not who stood there when Francis turned.

It was James, wiry and tall, even paler than he’d looked in their transmissions but _alive_. His eyes were red, like he’d been crying, his uniform wrinkled, and he leaned on a cane, no doubt a remnant of his stroke. It took all of Francis’s self-control not to burst into tears of relief right here on the hangar deck. He took a long second to school his face into a mask of a man who had not just had his entire world made whole again. “Captain Fitzjames.”

“Captain Crozier.” James was wearing the mask of decorum as well, but Francis could see the brittleness of it, the way it was fraying at the edges. When had he learned to read James’s face so well? “Lieutenant Little directed me to you regarding a berth. Did I understand him right?”

Bless Edward for not asking too many questions. “Yes, ah—" Francis looked around the hangar. Hodgson was leading the first decontamination team into one of the shuttles. MacDonald and Edward had the handling of the survivors well in hand. And James was standing in front of Francis, tall and handsome even after the last horrible months. “Come with me, if you would.”

They exited the hangar together, keeping a carefully measured distance between their bodies. Francis was hyperaware of where James’s body stood in relation to his at all times, as though he was trying to plot a slingshot course around him. It was all orbital mechanics and an inevitable collision. As they went down the hallway to the lift, James leaned over to whisper in his ear.

“Can’t believe you told Little you’d take care of my quarters. I had to keep a straight face in front of the man.”

Francis giggled, then slapped a hand over his mouth. Hysteria, after too little sleep and too much adrenaline, sat close to the surface. His composure wavered when he saw James, also struggling to keep a straight face. It was a strange thing, to be alive.

* * *

Edward Little saw Thomas Blanky make his way through the thinning crowd in the hangar of Terror with a single-minded determination and a bright smile on his face. It took Edward a moment to realise Blanky was headed for him.

“Did you see them?”

Blanky took position on a crate next to Edward and propped up his prosthetic leg on another. Edward—who had spent his formative years in the Navy fighting Martians—never felt quite at ease around Blanky and had a feeling the tall Martian knew it. If he did, he was kind, and didn’t mention it to Edward.

“Who?” Edward asked, quite confused at being singled out for what seemed nothing more than a friendly chat. He’d certainly never had a conversation with Blanky, at least not one that Captain Crozier wasn’t also involved in. The two outcasts of the UN Navy were thick as thieves.

“The captain and the other captain, Ned.” Blanky elbowed him in the side. “Our Frank and Fitzjames.”

“Oh.”

Edward had indeed been perplexed at the captain’s strange request— _“If Fitzjames”,_ and he had said _if_ as though he himself didn’t even know if Fitzjames would be on the shuttle, _“If Fitzjames is on one of the shuttles, send him to me regarding a berth. I think we captains will figure that out between the two of us”_.

“Like two albatrosses reuniting after a long year at sea,” Blanky mused, clearly most tickled by the situation, “Fucking hilarious, if you ask me.”

“You mean to say—" If he was honest with himself, Edward wasn’t sure what Blanky meant to say. This was not a line of thought he was willing to follow regarding his captain. He turned again to the navigator, who laughed at his confused expression. “Have you never seen a nature documentary, Edward? Shame on you.”

Edward had seen nature documentaries. He had even gone so far as considering a major in biology, but it was the Navy or a life on Basic for him, and so he’d chosen the Navy. He knew one thing about albatrosses, and that was that like most fish-eating seabirds, they were extinct due to overfishing. Edward wondered if the world they were about to discover had albatrosses, or something similar.

“Ah well.” Blanky clapped his shoulder in a friendly way. “I’ll leave you to puzzle that one out. And if anything comes up tonight that’s not an emergency? I think it can wait till morning. Don’t you agree, Ned? Our captain needs his rest.”

“Of course,” Edward said dumbly, then watched Blanky weave his way back through the few stragglers still on the hangar deck. Halfway to the hatch, he turned. “And watch a fucking nature documentary,” he yelled, then turned, chuckling to himself as he went.

* * *

Francis felt very bold, and flushed, and incredibly exhausted. The loss of thirty-five crew had embedded itself like a sharp object in his chest. Either he would be unable to sleep for the next twenty hours, or he would collapse the moment he got to his quarters. The return of gravity only added to the disorientation, making him reach out absentmindedly for handholds he no longer needed.

And always, James. He could only barely restrain himself from reaching out and finally _touching_ James, the way he’d wanted to for so long. On the way up to his quarters, he jolted every time the sleeve of James’s jumpsuit so much as brushed his.

“I—ah—left instructions with Edward. He’ll take command for the next hours.”

Francis felt bad to saddle Edward with it all, but for the first time in months there was nothing urgent that needed his attention, and he deserved the respite. He’d barely slept the last week, spending every minute he could spare on preparations and the eulogy of the men they were going to lose. Having James near was electrifying in the way a coffee at three am was electrifying—it sharpened everything in the unbearable way of too little sleep.

James stopped at the threshold to Francis’s quarters.

“Francis.”

His eyes sought Francis’s, and he looked so incredibly lost then. Francis crossed the distance between them and took James’s hand in his. “You need to rest, James.” He could guess what would follow—the litany of guilt, of self-doubt, of _why me and not someone else_. “Trust me, you’ll feel better after you sleep.”

James nodded, then, his shoulders sagging. The tension drained out of him, and though they were at only three-quarters of a g, it suddenly looked like James was weighed down by at least twice as much. Francis brought him inside and closed the door behind them.

“I can’t decide if I want to be back there with them, or if I’m glad to be here,” James said quietly as Francis helped him out of the outer flight suit. He threw the whole gear into the recycler, even though he knew that everything leaving _Erebus_ had been decontaminated thrice over. James’s eyes were fixed on a point miles away. Francis took his face between his hands.

“I’m glad you’re here, James.”

James closed his eyes. “I thought the worst that could happen was the iridium turned out to be a fluke and I wouldn’t get promoted at the end of this. You and Ross made it look so easy.”

“It wasn’t easy,” Francis said. He helped James to the bed, steering him with gentle touches. “It was exciting, and it was terrifying, but it wasn’t easy. We almost lost Jopson to some of the local fauna. We couldn’t bring supplies down from the ships because the cloud cover was too thick most days. Gravity was at one-point-three-g, so even the Earthers weren’t happy most days. All the while we knew the UNN only wanted to hear two words: extraction profitable. I don’t think any of this is going to be profitable for a good long while.”

He’d never said it out loud to anyone, not even James Ross. They had marvelled at the wonders they saw together, propping each other up, but keeping their sorrows to themselves.

“And still you came here.”

James looked at Francis with wide eyes, as though afraid Francis might disappear before his very eyes, as though he might yet decide against coming here and leave James all alone.

“There are only so many ways to a promotion for a captain in the UNN who isn’t trusted with a war command,” Francis said matter-of-factly. It didn’t hurt anymore, not with the war seven years in the past. He’d found other ways to survive in the UNN, ways that didn’t involve bombing the Belt over a conflict with Mars.

James settled back on Francis’s crash couch. Even though the captain’s couch was a little wider than standard crew-issue, it was a tight fit. Francis was determined, and so he made it work, fitting himself next to James. Quite suddenly, James buried his face in his hands.

“Dundy,” he pressed out, then inhaled a shuddering breath. “I—it doesn’t seem real, no matter how many times I tell myself that he’s—he’s—"

“You two were close,” Francis observed.

“Did a tour of duty together. Home fleet. Asteroid patrol. It was boring as shit, but we knew how to keep busy.” Another sob wrecked through him. “I shouldn’t have brought him here. I’m a terrible friend. I’m a terrible person.”

Francis knew those thoughts. They kept him company every night. They were on his mind most waking hours. He knew only one thing that had ever been able to stop them, even for a little while. He was currently watching it fall apart in real time.

“You’re a captain, James. These are the decisions we have to make.” The song still echoed around his head. It would join the prayer for the dead of Eros in his mind, he already knew that. “But if you didn’t feel this way, you’d be a poor example of one.”

James turned. He hesitated a moment before gingerly putting one questioning hand on Francis’s arm. Francis pulled him in. Against his chest, James breathed in and out shakily.

“I miss him. I’m going to miss him.”

“I know,” Francis said.

“Would you still go to Titan with me?” James drew himself up, extricating himself from Francis’s embrace. Francis was struck by the expression in his eyes—wide-eyed, a little afraid of the intensity of its own feelings. 

“I would,” Francis said, swallowing any manner of embarrassing admissions he might have tacked on— _I would go anywhere with you; I would do anything for you_. James reached for his hand and squeezed it. Maybe he had understood, after all.

They slept.

Sleep, which had eluded Francis for a week, now came heavy and dark. He didn’t dream, which he considered a mercy. It simply felt like falling into a bottomless pit, one where he was no one, with no ambitions and no responsibilities, his body heavy and weightless at the same time. Keeping time by the rise and fall of James’s chest.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _"Vertrauen ist gut, Kontrolle ist besser."_ is the one German idiom that really gets Belter culture and it makes me laugh every time.


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Gone and gone and gone and gone.

“You’ve done it, James. You found us the most miserable spot on the entire _pashang_ planet.”

Francis’s bones ached. They were standing on a wind-whipped plain, red dune-grass flattened against the sand. The sky was a familiar steel-grey that reminded Francis of the UNN base in Den Hague on the Western edge of the Common European Interest Zone. Training on actual ships—not spaceships, _ships_ on water—there, the sky had looked much the same.

“Believe it or not, this is the most hospitable spot according to Dundy’s research.” James stood confidently on top of the dune, surveying first the sea to his left and then the inland plain. “The soil scans looked promising. We can’t farm in the mountains, can we?”

The UNN would have had them land closer to the mountains. That was where the iridium was. But the late Lieutenant Henry Le Vesconte had spent the last days of his life with a much more important analysis—which terrain of the planet would give his fellow crew the best shot at survival. Francis was not impressed at what he’d come up with, but he also recognised he wasn’t the expert here.

“I suppose not,” Francis said, “Still, the wind is miserable.”

Standing at the foot of the dune, looking up at James, Francis had never seen a more formidable sight. He hadn’t climbed the dune—already out of breath and in pain from the trek as he was, never mind the walk back to their campsite—but he doubted the view James had from up there could be much better than the view Francis had of him.

“You would be miserable even if this were as pleasant as Malta’s Blue Lagoon,” James teased, making a careful way down the sandy slope. They had seen little in terms of local wildlife so far, but some of the crew had reported hearing unfamiliar noises at night, hoots and scream-like sounds that roused them from their beds in the preliminary shelters they had built.

“I wonder what season we landed in,” Francis mused as they began their trek back to the campsite. Going was hardest while the ground was still sand, and Francis had to grit his teeth. He wished James would say something to distract him.

“Would you like me to invent a name for it?” James asked, “It’s no matter. We have the greenhouse-tents, and samples of Earth soil.”

It wasn’t enough. James knew that as well as Francis. They would have to farm on the actual planet if they wanted to survive. Francis didn’t doubt that somebody would come looking for them eventually—he trusted the greed of the UNN that far—but the question was when, and if anybody would still be alive by then. Francis was determined to make it.

Gradually, the sand gave way to darker soil that was easier to walk on. Francis still sweated and panted. They paused a couple of times when he felt too faint to continue. James would rest a hand on his shoulder, steadying him.

“Blasted gravity,” Francis muttered. He never missed thrust gravity until he felt the pull of a real planet. James’s eyes, when he was sure that Francis wouldn’t faint, twinkled with amusement. “At least here I have the advantage of you.”

He had made a full recovery from his stroke—James was still young, and the help of MacDonald and the return to thrust gravity and then planetary gravity had done the rest. Francis made an inquiring noise. “What do you mean?”

“Always envied the way you moved when we weren’t under thrust. You looked like you had been born to it.”

They always stunned Francis; the little reminders of how long James had been watching him. He wondered if James had similar moments of revelation in things that Francis said, where he betrayed the depth of his own emotion.

“I was,” Francis reminded him and wondered in the same moment if he couldn’t guess what James was getting at.

“I could have been, too,” James said, quietly. Francis took his hand. “If you can keep me moving in this gravity for a couple of years, I will show you how to make less of an idiot of yourself in _naterash_.”

“I will hold you to that promise, Francis Crozier.”

The settlement—if it deserved that name—came into view on the horizon long before they reached it. The land was flat where they had settled, which helped the winds that shook them day and night. By the time they returned it was getting dark, the lit windows like gaps in the dark silhouettes of the houses. The prefab settlement came with solar cells that could power them for years, possibly decades, with careful maintenance. And they had time to dedicate to that maintenance. Francis had watched with satisfaction as the crew began teaching others their skills, sharing them because it was important now that no one was irreplaceable.

They had lost enough crew to get here.

John Irving had died in the early hours of first shift three days after Erebus was abandoned.

In the end, they hadn’t returned to thrust soon enough for him to make any sort of recovery. Without gravity, the blood couldn’t drain, and just kept filling his abdominal cavity. Francis and James stood over his pale body, already cleaned and prepared for burial, as MacDonald outlined all this. Francis had called Cornelius Hickey’s court martial twenty minutes afterwards, his face still pale with anger. Hickey would not again leave the prefab cabin at the edge of the settlement, which was a great deal kinder than Francis had felt.

Francis and James had made a little hut by something that resembled a tree their home. The tree analogue was bent out of shape from the wind and creaked horribly at night, but James had taken a strange liking to it, like one might pick up an oddly shaped rock while on a hike. “It adds character,” he had announced, and Francis had been helpless to that argument.

Their shared space was small, but that was not something they minded. After years spent on UNN ships, they were not men who needed much space. Francis preferred being close to James.

James took off his jacket and hung it up, then shook out his hair. Francis’s movements were slower, and stiffer—there wasn’t a day these days when he didn’t go to bed with creaking joints, swearing about bloody gravity and what it did to his body. James helped him out of his outer layers, pressing a gentle kiss to his temple. “Tired?”

Francis turned his face until he could capture James’s lips with his own, softly at first and then more insistently. James hummed. “I suppose that’s an answer.”

James was unlike anybody else Francis had ever known. Francis was sure he could spend a lifetime learning him and still not fully understand what moved James. But he knew that James loved him, an aging Belter with a temper in search of his place in the world. Out here, at the end of the world, it didn’t matter.

James closed the shades while Francis turned up the heating. It got cold in the little cabin during the day, the constant wind ripping away what little heat they managed to conserve. James sat down on their shared bed with a broad smile. He patted the space next to him.

He took Francis’s breath away.

Francis came to him, settling himself on James’s lap. James’s breath stuttered in his throat when Francis sat down, his hips twitching upwards. Francis kissed him.

Kissing James would never get old. Francis kissed the corners of his mouth, the line of his jaw, the pale skin of his neck and his collarbone. James made a quiet humming noise—he was excessively ticklish, and Francis loved to feel him squirm under his feather-light kisses. James tilted his head back to give Francis better access, and Francis slid his fingers into James’s hair.

They did settle back on the bed eventually, when Francis’s knees ached too much. James rubbed his legs, tracing the spots where the bone density juice had twisted them out of shape over the years. Francis threw an arm over his face—he didn’t like being the target of James’s scrutiny, not when his body so plainly bore the signs of his life in the Belt. But James had never minded, had never hesitated to touch Francis except to marvel at every inch of skin he got to touch. It made Francis’s face turn red more often than not, and James delighted in that. By the time James was finished easing the pain in Francis’s joints, Francis’s cock was half-hard against his leg, and James grinned at Francis with glee. He settled on the mattress next to Francis, one hand tracing idle patterns over Francis’s stomach, close to his crotch.

“Relaxed?”

Francis’s body was thrumming with something other than pain now, and he rolled James over so he could pin him to the mattress. James gasped prettily, and Francis peppered a line of kisses along James’s throat. James gasped quietly. “Oh, yes, _there_ …”

He rolled his hips lazily upwards and Francis met him, the slow drag of their cocks against each other electrifying. “ _Hngh_ , Francis.” James, always the more vocal between the two, whined. “Christ, that feels so good.”

For a while they simply lay rutting against each other, enjoying the feeling of their bodies touching. Francis linked one of his hands with James’s, anchoring himself and James. In these moments, Francis felt closest to the weightlessness of zero-g. James gasped and whined under Francis, the most pleased smile on his face whenever Francis pulled back to look at him. It made Francis want to kiss him deeply, and so he did. James’s mouth opened easily for his tongue; James eager to let him in. There was something unabashedly decadent about lying here and kissing James, something defiant and alive that stole Francis’s breath. James chased his mouth when Francis pulled back. Francis shushed him, indicating his goal with a light squeeze of James’s cock that James arched into eagerly. Francis had to steady his breathing.

He eased down James’s pants, only briefly distracted by the perfect shape of James’s arse under his hands. Shuffling down, he squeezed it one more time for good measure, then guided James’s cock into his mouth.

James’s entire body went rigid and then relaxed as James moaned and spread his legs further. Francis loved pleasuring James—he was so responsive, so unashamed with Francis. Francis suckled lightly at the head before diving down further, letting the weight and taste and smell of James fill his mouth. James’s breath was coming in short staccato bursts— _ah, ah, ah_ —and his hand grasped around for Francis’s, finding it and linking them back together.

“Yes, oooh God, _yes_.” James was babbling again, Francis’s gauge of how close he was. He was in no hurry, moving in torturously slow strokes up and down James’s cock, savouring the way it made James shudder violently. “Francis, _your mouth_ —"

Francis hummed, pleased with himself, and James shouted—a strangled sound, cut off before Francis could really enjoy it. James’s chest was heaving, drawing in great gulping bursts of air like a drowning man. “Marry me, Francis. Oh my God, I love you. Please marry me.”

Francis almost stopped, stunned at James’s words and the sudden bursting bloom of warmth in his chest at the thought— _marry James_ , by God—but he knew by James’s panting and the trembling of his limbs that he was close. He hollowed his cheeks, took James deeper and listened for the whine that followed after. He would, in a heartbeat. There was no question in his mind that he would marry James. The thought seemed so wildly optimistic that it made Francis’s head spin. He wrapped a hand around the base of James’s cock, stroking him quick and tight, the way he liked it. James was shaking more, his rambling reduced to nonsensical fragments of words. His limbs locked up tightly, and he exclaimed a surprised “ _ah_!” before spilling in shuddering hot spurts in Francis’s mouth. Francis held him in his mouth, swallowing around him until James squirmed and whined under him.

“Let me,” he said, pushing Francis off, and Francis rolled onto his back with a pleased grin. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, leering at James, and James shoved at his shoulder before practically pouncing on Francis.

When they lay satisfied and boneless afterwards, James suddenly began laughing, throwing an arm over his face.

“I just asked you to marry me while you were sucking my cock, didn’t I?”

Under his arm, Francis could see that his cheeks had coloured red. He rolled over so that he could look at James. “You did, yes.”

James groaned. “Oh, I’m sorry.”

“I would only be sorry if you didn’t mean it,” Francis said quietly. The thought of rejection was never far – the idea that he was lovable but ultimately a stopgap, not really human and not really suited to be loved.

“Oh, I mean it, Francis,” James said, and the knot of worry unspooled in Francis’s chest. James withdrew the arm but still didn’t look at him. “It’s been on my mind for a while. But I didn’t mean—well, I had imagined a somewhat more romantic setting.”

Of course he had. A knowing smile stole onto Francis’s face. “What’s more romantic than me sucking your cock?” He asked, one eyebrow raised. James groaned and went back to burying his face in his hands. “I’m never going to live this down.”

“You’ve just written my speech for our wedding. Beat that with your story about patrolling Vesta station.”

“You wouldn’t!” James exclaimed, dropping his hands to cast a horrified look at Francis. Evidently, he wasn’t pleased with the mischievous grin that greeted him. “I will make you regret it,” he announced before swiftly jabbing a finger in Francis’s side, which had Francis squirm away, James in pursuit, until they were both lying in a heap of giggles, piled atop each other.

“If you want to, you can ask me again,” Francis gasped. “I’ll pretend like it’s the first time.”

“Alright.” James righted himself, fussing with his hair. He was still naked, but that never seemed to bother him—he looked dignified whatever he was or wasn’t wearing. He sat before Francis, legs tucked under himself, and reached for Francis’s hand with both of his. “Will you marry me, Francis?”

Francis surged up without hesitation, to plant a kiss on the mouth of the man with whom he had traversed the universe. “Yes, James. Yes.”

* * *

Francis was not surprised to come across Thomas on his way around the perimeter of the settlement. Thomas often came out here at night, not minding the wind nor the strange noises of the plain, to find a rock or a log to sit on and stare out at the flat lands around them. His silhouette looked bent with age in the gravity of the planet, huddled over his flickering pipe, although he was barely past fifty.

“You must have been extraordinarily optimistic to bring that with you,” Francis commented. Thomas shifted to make room for him on the boulder. “You have your whiskey. Let me keep my pipe.”

Smoking was prohibited on ships. A fire in space was the worst ordinary calamity anybody could picture. Still, for as long as Francis had known him, Blanky had carried that accursed pipe with him, though the opportunities to smoke were far and few between.

They sat—Thomas smoking, Francis thinking. Above them the clouds shifted rapidly in the ceaseless wind. Catching a glimpse of the stars through the upheaval reminded Francis of trying to identify a bird in flight. He’d loved birds, back on Earth.

“I might go away for a while, Frank,” Thomas said into the silence. Francis frowned. “Go where?”

Thomas took a drag of his pipe, clacking the stem between his teeth thoughtfully. Francis knew from experience that the stem looked near chewed through. “It’s funny, you know. The way you learn things. When I met Esther, I pretended I needed tutoring to get into the terraforming programme. Bless me, I hadn’t the faintest shot at a spot, but she was—well.” He shook his head wistfully. “I miss her.”

Francis had seen a picture of her, once. She was a scientist in Mars’s terraforming programme, an accomplished scholar with two daughters and a husband who couldn’t return home to her. She had the more compact build of an Inner, and she’d been smiling at Blanky behind the camera on the picture, her almond-shaped eyes crinkling at some joke he must have made.

Francis put a hand on his shoulder, digging his thumb into the meat of it. Whatever strange mood Blanky was in, he wanted to shake his friend out of it. “I know.”

Thomas sighed, then. “You know I don’t begrudge you Fitzjames, Frank. But it makes a man think. And I’m thinking I would like to see Esther again.”

“We’re doing everything we can to get you back home, Tom, believe me.”

A gust of wind tore through Francis’s jacket, and he shivered. Thomas didn’t seem affected by the cold. He stretched out his back and Francis could hear the joints pop, then settled back on the boulder with a sigh.

“I think I learned something, running from that shuttle. I understand some things about the protomolecule now. There’s an answer to our predicament somewhere on this planet. And I’m going to find it.”

“Out of the question,” Francis said, “Are you out of your mind?”

“Oh, _setop_ , Frank. I’m not asking your permission.”

Francis stood in one decisive motion. He didn’t know what he was going to do—wrestle Blanky to the ground? Detain him? The man was sitting calmly as ever, looking at Francis with nothing more than an amused smile lit only by his pipe. Francis shoved his hands into his pockets.

“I’m still your captain.”

“That you are,” Thomas said, “And I won’t be gone forever. Just a couple of weeks’ reconnaissance, at first. See if anything comes of it.”

Francis blew out a breath. Thomas’s greatest weapon against him had always been his refusal to engage Francis when he found himself in a fit of temper. Francis could shout and shout against him, and Thomas would sit there, calm as he _pashang_ pleased, until Francis had screamed himself hoarse.

“Alright,” Francis agreed.

“Wasn’t asking for your permission, but I’m glad we’re agreed.” Thomas patted the boulder. “Come, sit with me. Let me enjoy a pipe with my friend before I set out.”

Francis sat back down, and Thomas laughed at the miserable expression on his face. Their shoulders bumped against each other as they contemplated the night sky. Francis fancied he could hear the thundering of the ocean in the distance, but it might have only been the wind.

He wasn’t going to feel better for a while, he knew that. He wasn’t going to feel like before. The losses they had endured would always sit in his stomach like a knife. He would suffer under the weight of responsibility for a long while, perhaps the rest of his life. Perhaps they would figure out what had broken their fusion reactors. Their survival was no longer a precarious thing—by no means a guarantee, but also not something that kept Francis awake at night. Perhaps they never would. Then they would simply remain a mystery, vanished from the map, a question mark in the history books until someone came looking for them. These people might meet the same fate as _Terror_ and _Erebus_ had.

Francis could still see her in the night sky sometimes, or he imagined he could. He never consulted his hand terminal to check. He knew she was broadcasting still, a message that might reach the ring gate and Sol beyond it. Perhaps a Belter on Medina would hear the words and understand them not as a cry for help but as the warning that they were.

_Gone and gone and gone and gone._ But still alive.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> According to Ao3 I'm on BST, which is not true. It's definitely Sunday where I am and I've completed what began as a convenient way to avoid thesis writing at the beginning of May. I don't think I've ever written something close to 40k faster than this. 
> 
> Thank you to everyone who's read this. It's been such a joy to hear that people enjoy my little passion project.
> 
> As always, **Translations**
> 
> pashang - fucking  
> náterash - on the float (not under thrust)  
> sétop - shut up

**Author's Note:**

> I am also on tumblr as [veganthranduil](https://veganthranduil.tumblr.com/)! If you want my eternal gratitude, consider leaving me a comment.


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